The Pattern of Dyslipidemia among Diabetics at the Bowen University Teaching Hospital, Ogbomoso, South-West Nigeria.

Abstract

Background: Dyslipidemia has been defined as an abnormal amount of lipids in the blood. Research over the past four decades has consistently shown the burden of dyslipidemia to be high in terms of morbidity, mortality, and medical costs.

Objective: To study the pattern of lipid abnormalities from a sample of type 2 diabetic Nigerians who receive care at an outpatient diabetes clinic.

Methods: This was a cross sectional study. Fasting serum lipid levels of all the subjects were obtained. Lipid profiles were analyzed and the normal values were taken to be as follows: total cholesterol <5.0mmol/L, LDL-cholesterol <3.0mmol/L, HDL-cholesterol >1.0mmol/L in men, >1.2mmol/L in women and triglycerides <1.7mmol/L. There were a total of 219 subjects and a systematic sampling method was adopted to recruit the subjects.

Results: The prevalence of dyslipidemia (at least one abnormal lipid profile) in this sample population was 58.4%. The percentages of diabetic Nigerians with low and normal HDL cholesterol were 44.3 and 55.7 respectively. For LDL cholesterol, percentages of subjects with high and normal results were 23.7 and 76.3 respectively, (p=0.0003). Sixteen percent (16%) of the subjects had high level of triglycerides (TG). The percentage of subjects with high total cholesterol (TC) was 12.3 (p=0.353).

Conclusions: More than half of the Nigerian diabetics (58.4%) studied had dyslipidemia. The most common pattern of dyslipidemia was low HDL cholesterol level combined with high Triglyceride levels.

Keywords: Diabetes Mellitus, Dyslipidemia, Lipid Profile, Pattern, Nigeria