“A Cross Sectional Study to Determine Overweight and Obesity among Medical Students and to correlate it with Parameters of Metabolic Syndrome”

Overweight and obesity are becoming major problems in the developed as well as developing countries. In India about 30–65% of adult urban Indians are reported to be either overweight or obese. Therefore the objectives of the study was to assess the prevalence of overweight, obesity and metabolic syndrome and determine the correlation between overweight, obesity and parameters of metabolic syndrome among medical students of Mandya Institute of Medical Sciences (MIMS), Mandya.

The data of the cross-sectional study includes physical measurements like height, weight, Waist Circumference (WC) and biochemical investigation like Fasting Blood Glucose (FBS), serum Triglyceride (TG) and High Density Lipoprotein-Cholesterol (HDL-C).

Out of 304 students, 144 were male students (47.37%) and 160 (52.63%) were female students. The prevalence of underweight in the present study was found to be 16.5%, overweight 15.2%, obese 0.9% and metabolic syndrome was 6.25%. It was found that higher percentage (9.72%) of male students had metabolic syndrome as compared to 5 (3.13%) females.

Overweight and obese students had increased values of biochemical parameters as compared to students with normal BMI. Metabolic syndrome was more prevalent in males than in female students of MIMS, Mandya. Early detection of the individual components of metabolic syndrome would help in early treatment and prevention of progression to metabolic syndrome.