Prevalence of obesity and abdominal obesity in healthy Gabonese adult populations

Obesity is complex, multi-factorial chronic disease, which defined as excess adipose tissue, and it is associated with numerous chronic health conditions, such as cardio and cerebrovascular disease.The purpose of this study was to investigate the prevalence of global and abdominal obesity according to obesity indexes in general adult populations living to Libreville. We conducted a population-based, cross-sectional study with a sample of 957 active adult subjects, men and women (mean age 37.47 ± 7.66 years old, 19-66 years old) from Libreville. Anthropometric and biological variables were evaluated by standard methods.The prevalence of abdominal obesity was about 35.05% in women and 8.18% in men as evaluated by WC, and about 37.01% in women and 27.64% in men as evaluated by WHR1. Anthropometrics variables were increased in men, contrary to body indices that increased in women, excepted WHR1 that decreased in women. According to BAI, the global obesity was 33.09% versus 16.51% for BMI. BAI and WC were appropriate to estimate both global and abdominal obesity. BAI was more important in women (35.22±4.50) compared to men (31.81±3.12) according to increasing WC (>102cm). All global obesity and abdominal obesity indices increased with old age. The prevalence of abdominal obesity was twice as much (35.05%) the prevalence of global obesity in this study. We propose that BAI be used to estimate global obesity in complementarily of BMI. WC remains now the specific index to evaluate abdominal obesity, if absence of technical instruments such as DXA.