Abstract

Background: Excess lipids has been shown to be a risk factor for coronary artery disease, as well as cerebrovascular and peripheral vascular diseases. Hyperlipidemia has become an important public health problem; therefore, it is of great importance to know the level of its modifiable risk factors to prevent its occurrence in the population. Objective: to estimate the prevalence of hyperlipidemia and associated factors and complications among the population aged over 21years in Arar city, Northern Saudi Arabia. Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out to find the prevalence of hypercholesterolemia among 480 residents of Arar city. Laboratory and physician diagnosed hyperlipidemia, body mass index; presence of complications among the studied cases was assessed. The significance of association of hyperlipidemia with age, sex, body mass index and hypertension was tested using the chi-squared test. Results: In the studied population, males were 54.2%, 35% were 60 years or more, 32.9% were 40-60 years old, 26.7% were 22-40 years old and only 5.4%were 21 years or less, With mean age (± SD) 51.9±21.1. The prevalence of Lab. diagnosed hyperlipidemia among studied populations was 53.8%. There was significant association between hyperlipidemia and age, sex, family history, smoking, fatty diet, defective muscular exercise including walking, high meat diet, diabetes and BMI group (P<0.05). However there were no significant correlations with alcohol consumption (P>0.05). Only 75.2% of cases asked medical advice, it was improvement after treatment in 61.2%. Complications of hyperlipidemia were reported in 34.1% of the studied cases. Ischemic heart was found in 20.2%, myocardial infarction in 7.8%, cerebrovascular stroke in 4.7%, low physical fitness in 1.6% and chronic headache in only 0.8%. Conclusion: The prevalence of hyperlipidemia was high in the studied population. Reported risk factors were age, sex, family history, smoking, fatty diet, defective muscular exercise including walking, high meat diet, diabetes and obesity. Reported complications were ischemic heart and myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular stroke, low physical fitness and chronic headache.

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