Prevalence of Cardiovascular Diseases Risk Factors among Jordanians

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: One of the most common causes of death worldwide is cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). This study evaluated the prevalence of CVDs risk factors (RFs) and their constellation electively among the Jordanian population and, assessing the most prevalent RF interplay with the rest of CVDs RFs as well as the impact of age and gender dimorphism on the frequencies of coexistence of multiple CVDs risk factors (RFs) among the Jordanian population. METHODS AND RESULTS: In this observational multicenter study, a total of 1449 subjects were enrolled. The mean age (±SD) was 44.35 ± 14.46 years; 796 (54.9%) of them were females and 801 (55.28%) of the whole study pool had no family history of premature CVDs. Only 5.9% of the population did not have any of these RFs. The prevalence of CVDs MRFs within-affected subjects was as follows: there were 1081 (74.6%) subjects with overall dyslipidemia, 471 (32.51%) with obesity, 456 (31.47%) were smokers, and at the first diagnostic encounter 541 (37.47%) were with elevated blood pressure and, 310 (21.51%) were with elevated random blood sugar. The coexistence of ≥ two, ≥ three and, ≥ four RFs was observed in 75.7%, 44.4%, and 21.4% of the subjects, respectively. The constellation of multiple RFs was more frequent in men than that in women, where the presence of ≥ two RFs for men was at 86.18% vs. 67.09% for women. Similarly, the appearance of multiple RFs increases with age, starting from the existence of ≥ three, and four RFs respectively. Most notably the clustering of ≥ five RFs in the age group of 45–59 years showed the greatest frequency vs. any other age group. CONCLUSIONS: CVDs risk factors (RFs) and clusters of them are extremely prevalent in the Jordanian population. Overall dyslipidemia is the most prevalent MRF and the most favors clustering with other CVDs RFs. Combined two RFs had the highest proportional frequency between all six RFs clusters. The constellation of at least two, three, and four CVDs RFs presented at almost three-fourth, half, and around one-fourth; respectively, Middle-aged males presented significantly higher rates of ≥ five RFs occurrences than females.