Association of visceral adiposity index with cardiovascular risk factors among young adults

Introduction and Aim: The frequent cause of mortality today is cardiovascular disease. Though dyslipidemia predicts cardiovascular risk, the possibility of risk cannot be excluded in normal lipid profile. Therefore, the study was conducted to associate visceral adiposity index (VAI) with cardiovascular risk factors among young adults.   Materials and Methods: It is a cross-sectional study in which 150 men and 150 women between the ages of 20 and 40 participated. A detailed clinical history, anthropometric measurements, fasting plasma glucose and fasting lipid profile were estimated. VAI was calculated.   Results: Mean VAI was 2.13±0.5 in men and 2.65±0.8 in women. Based on visceral adiposity index, 53% men and 61% women have a high risk of cardiovascular disease. VAI correlated positively with waist circumference, BMI, waist hip ratio, blood pressure, fasting plasma glucose, serum triglyceride, lipid ratios.  VAI showed significant negative correlation with HDL cholesterol.   Conclusion: We explored the increase in cardiovascular risk among young adults. Though mean values of lipid profile and lipid ratios were within the desired range in our study, around 50% of the young adults had high risk for cardiovascular disease. Hence, VAI index can be used along with the existing lipid profile to identify those at increased cardiovascular risk.