Cardiometabolic risk assessment: A school-based study in Brazilian adolescent

Recently, new indices combining routine and low-cost anthropometric and biochemical measurements have emerged. Among them, the visceral adiposity index (VAI) and lipid accumulation product (LAP) are being investigated for the prediction of altered blood pressure (BP) and insulin resistance (IR). Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate whether visceral adiposity index (VAI) and height-corrected lipid accumulation product (HLAP) are predictors of cardiometabolic risk in Brazilian adolescents.

Data were obtained from the Cardiovascular Risk in Adolescents (ERICA) study, a cross-sectional, national, multicenter, school-based survey conducted between 2013 and 2014 in Brazil. The sample consisted of 37,815 adolescents aged 12-17 years of both genders attending the last 3 years of elementary or secondary school from public and private schools located in 273 municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. A Poisson regression was performed to verify associations between VAI and HLAP indices and the presence of altered BP and IR according to sex. In addition, receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) analysis was applied to compare the predictive ability and determine the cut-off points of the VAI and HLAP indices in identifying cardiometabolic risk obtained by altered BP and IR. The prevalences of altered BP and IR were 24.49 % (95 % confidence interval [CI]: 23.14-25.87) and 24.22 % (95 % CI: 22.70-25.80), respectively.

The VAI and HLAP indices are good predictors of cardiometabolic risk in Brazilian adolescents. HLAP showed better performance in identifying insulin resistance in males.