The extents of metabolic syndrome among Antiretroviral Therapy exposed and ART naïve adult HIV patients in the Gedeo-zone, Southern-Ethiopia: a comparative cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: HIV infection and Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) has been associated with metabolic syndrome (MS). The prevalence of MS varies substantially between populations and is not yet well-known in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), including Ethiopia. The current study aims to estimate and evaluate the magnitude of MS among ART exposed and ART naïve HIV-infected patients. METHODS: A comparative cross-sectional design was employed among the randomly chosen PLHIVs from two hospitals and two health centers, found in the Gedeo zone, southern-Ethiopia. Data collection was run beginning from December 29th, 2017 up to January 22nd − 2019, using the WHO steep tool; eventually, the completed data entered into Epidata (V-3.1) and exported to SPSS (V(− 22)) for analysis. The revised international diabetes federation criterion was used to define MS and its components. The mean, standard deviations and proportions were used as a descriptive summary. Categorical data and the proportion of MS in the two groups were compared using binary logistic regression, and results were reported statistically significant with p-value is less than 5%. RESULTS: A total of 633 (n = 422 on ART and n = 211 ART-naive) PLHIVS was involved, with an overall response rate of 96.2%. The cumulative proportion of MS was 42.5%(95% CI: 39.2–45.7), with 43.4%(95% CI: 39.1–47.4) among ART exposed and 40.8% (95% CI: 35.5–46.0) among ART naïve patients (P > 0.005). However, the difference was not statistically significant and signified that ART has no association with an increased proportion of MS. CONCLUSION: Overall this study demonstrated the presence of an elevated degree of overall MS among PLHIVs. Besides, although the difference was not statistically significant, a relatively higher proportion of MS was realized in the ART exposed than ART naïve groups. Implicated that at the time of the entire test and treatment approaches employed in this target group, routine screening of MS incorporated through HIV care and management system will be a vibrant action.