Objective: To determine the prevalence of obesity indices and investigate their association with cardiometabolic risk factors in overweight and obese adolescents. Materials and Methods: A total of 90 adolescents with matched sex and age -14(2) years were selected for the study and divided into three groups: Normal weight (NW), Overweight (OW) and Obese (OB) based on the BMI (body mass index) percentile for age and sex. Weight, BMI, BMI percentile and waist circumference (WC) were measured to evaluate their association with cardiometabolic parameters. Fasting blood sugar (FBS), glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c), total cholesterol (TC), high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), very low density lipoprotein cholesterol (VLDL-C), c-reactive protein (CRP), serum uric acid (SUA), T3, T4 and thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) are considered as cardiometabolic risk factors. The obesity and cardiometabolic parameters were compared between groups using Mann Whitney U test and the association between these parameters were evaluated by Spearman correlation test using SPSS V.20. Results: The obesity parameters - BMI, BMI percentile and WC for age and sex were statistically significant (p<0.001) between NW Vs OW, NW Vs OB and OW Vs OB groups. Cardiometabolic parameters - TC (NW Vs OB, p<0.05) and its fractions HDL-C (NW Vs OW, p<0.001 and NW Vs OB, p<0.001), LDL-C (NW Vs OW, p =0.03 and NW Vs OB, p=0.009) were statistically significant. Nevertheless, other cardiometabolic parameters like VLDL-C, TG, FBS, HbA1c, CRP, T3, T4, and TSH are statistically insignificant between the three groups. The obesity measures were positively correlated to TC and LDL-C levels and inversely related to HDL- C levels (Wt: rho = -0.325, p=0.002; BMI: -0.343, p<0.001; BMI percentile: rho= -0.361, p<0.001; WC: rho= -0.402, p<0.001) with statistical significance. The obesity indices are negatively correlated insignificantly to TSH levels. Conclusion: Findings revealed that poor lipid profile measures with elevated TC and LDL-C levels and lowered HDL-C and TSH levels were able to identify adolescents that are at risk for early onset of cardiometabolic diseases. FBS, HbA1c, TG, CRP, SUA, T3 and T4 measures are not correlated with obesity indices. Hence, our study concluded that in adolescents, obesity/overweight parameters are partially associated with cardiometabolic parameters to the fulfillment of criteria for metabolic syndrome.
