International Journal of Collaborative Research on Internal Medicine & Public Health

Prevalence and Cardiovascular Risk Factors at a University Community in Armenia, Colombia

Objective: This work sought to identify the prevalence and cardiovascular risk factors within a university community in Armenia, Quindío. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted during 2015, which used as population 216 individuals from a university community in Armenia, Quindío, including students, faculty, and administrative staff. The variables included were sociodemographic, lipid profile, glycaemia, nutritional variables, habits like exercise, cigarette smoking, and history of diabetes and hypertension. The variables were analysed for mean, standard deviation, and confidence intervals with a comparative analysis by gender. The differences among the groups were calculated with multiple regression analysis and chi square for the analysis of categorical variables. Results and Conclusions: This study found that the risk of having a cardiovascular episode in the next 10 years within a university population with a mean age of 33.64 years was 2.54%, according to the Framingham scale, which corresponded to 97.7% of the participants in the study. Only 2.3% of the participants had medium and high risk, which corresponded to the administrative staff group. The main factor that differentiates the groups with regard to cardiovascular risk is age; another risk factor identified in this study was glycaemia. With respect to habits, cigarette smoking and consumption of bakery goods were identified as cardiovascular risk factors.

Author(s):

Olga Alicia Nieto Cárdenas, Mercedes González, Lorena Rodríguez Nieto

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