Socioeconomic inequalities in the prevalence of biomarkers of cardio-metabolic disease in South Korea: Comparison of the Health Examinees Study to a nationally representative survey

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to examine socioeconomic inequalities in the prevalence of biomarkers of cardiovascular disease and diabetes in the newly developed large-scale genomic cohort study of Korean adults, the Health Examinees-Gem (HEXA-G), with a comparison of the nationally representative cross-sectional study, the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (K-NHANES). SUBJECTS/METHODS: Using the HEXA-G and the K-NHANES from 2007–2012, we analyzed the age-adjusted relative risk (RR) and prevalence of enlarged waist circumference (EWC), elevated triglycerides (ET), low HDL cholesterol (LHC), elevated blood pressure (EBP) and elevated blood glucose (EBG) by income and educational groups for adults at age 40–69. RESULTS: For men, the prevalence of risk factors was similar across different income and educational groups (p>0.1), and between the K-NHANES and the HEXA-G. Among five risk factors, EBG showed the greatest discrepancy by 7 to 11 percentage points (i.e., the prevalence of 0.43 and 0.36 for college graduates, respectively, in K-NHANES and HEXA-G). For women, socioeconomic inequalities appeared for the five risk factors. Prevalence of risk factors was mostly lower in the HEXA-G than the K-NHANES, by approximately 11.0 percentage points. Especially, the discrepancy between K-NHANES and HEXA-G was largest in EBG (i.e., the prevalence of 0.31 and 0.20 for the lowest income groups, respectively). CONCLUSION: The HEXA-G shows broadly similar socioeconomic inequality in prevalence of cardio-metabolic risk factors to the nationally representative sample with more modest socioeconomic inequality among women in the HEXA-G than the K-NHANES.