1Associate Professor, Department of Physiology, Kamineni Institute of Medical Sciences, Narketpally, Nalgonda, Telangana
2Assistant Professor, Department of Physiology, Kamineni Institute of Medical Sciences, Narketpally, Nalgonda, Telangana
3Professor and Head, Department of Physiology, Government medical college, Nizamabad, Telangana
4Professor and HOD, Department of Biochemistry, Kamineni Institute of Medical Sciences, Narketpally, Nalgonda, Telangana
Obesity is well recognised as an epidemic in both developed and developing countries. Obesity exhibits a wide variety of electrocardiogram (ECG) abnormalities in adults, which often lead to cardiovascular events. The present study aimed to evaluate the ECG intervals, especially QT and QTc in obese young medical undergraduates.
A cross sectional study was conducted among 60 apparently healthy young medical undergraduates between age group of 18 to 23 years, who were further divided into two groups according to their BMI. The first group consisted of non-obese subjects with BMI of 18 to 24.9 kg/m2 and the second group consisted of obese subjects with BMI of 30 kg/m2 and above. All the subjects underwent investigation for lipid profile and electrocardiogram analysis.
After analysing the data and comparing by independent sample t-test, we found significant (p<0.001) prolongation of QT and QTc interval in obese group along with significantly high serum total cholesterol, low density lipoproteins (LDLc) and triglycerides (TG) in comparison to non-obese group (P<0.001).
The ECG analysis of obese young women indicated prolonged QT and QTc intervals, which in turn predisposes them to risk of early onset of ventricular arrhythmias.
QT interval, QTc interval, Obesity, BMI, young women
