Brief Report Cardiovascular Risk Factors among Adolescent Secondary School Boys in Ahad Rufeida, Southwestern Saudi Arabia

SummaryA cross-sectional stratified sample of 1249 adolescent secondary school boys was studied. More than25% of boys did not practice any physical exercise. More than half of the parents (54.5%) wereconsanguineous. High prevalence of parental history of hypertension, diabetes and high blood lipidswas found. Smoking amounted to 11.8%. The prevalence of obesity was 23.3%. The study showed that6.8% had a high systolic blood pressure and 13.0% (162) had high diastolic blood pressure. There is aneed for a national programme to prevent and control cardiovascular risk factors among adolescents.IntroductionAdult atherosclerosis [1, 2], adult hypertension andponderosity [3], adult metabolic syndrome [4] andhigh body mass index (BMI) [5], have been correlatedwith cardiovascular risk factors in childhood or ado-lescent age of the same individuals. Economic devel-opment in Saudi Arabia during the past 30 years haschanged nutritional and lifestyle habits.The objective of the present work is to explore theprevalence of silent and clinical apparent cardiovas-cular risk factors among adolescent boys in AhadRufeida, Southwestern Saudi Arabia.Materials and MethodsA sample of six secondary school boys was selectedusing stratified sampling technique. Two classes fromeach educational level were randomly chosen. Datawere collected during March 2008 by group 32-malefourth-year medical students. The structured ques-tionnaire used in the present study is the Arabic ver-sion of CDC Adolescent Health Survey adopted andvalidated in previous study in Abha city [6].Standardized techniques were used to measureBMI, waist circumference [7] and blood pressure[8]. Three or more readings separated by at least5min were averaged. Hypertension is defined as aver-age systolic blood pressure (SBP) and/or diastolicblood presure (DBP) that is 95th percentile forgender, age and height on 3 occasions adjustedfor Saudi adolescents [9].ResultsThe present study included 1249 adolescent second-ary school boys. Their age ranged from 15–19 years.The least consumed food items were nuts, fish, freshjuices and fresh fruits. The most frequently consumedfood items were rice and bread. More than one-thirdof the boys (38%) were spending more than 3h dailywatching TV, 25.7% of boys did not practice anyphysical exercise (for >30min).Table 1 shows that more than half of the parents(54.5%) were consanguineous. Regarding parentalhistory of hypertension, the prevalence ranged from14.65% among mothers to reach 23.29 amongfathers. Similarly, fathers had higher history of dia-betes, angina or myocardial infarctions and highblood lipids (26.02, 3.52 and 6.16%, respectively)compared with mothers (13.37, 0.64 and 3.36%, re-spectively). The prevalence of current smokersamong the adolescent secondary school maleamounted to 11.8%. The prevalence of obesity andoverweight in the present study amounted to 23.3%among boys. Central obesity amounted to 14.1%.The study showed that 6.8% (85) of male adolescentshad a high systolic blood pressure ( 95th percentile)