Adiposity indices and their relationship with some risk factors of coronary heart disease in middle-aged Cambridge men and women

The relationship between five anthropometric measures (body mass index, wai st to hip ratio, conicity index, waist circumference and waist to height ra tio) and seven cardiovascular risk factors (total cholesterol, high and low density lipoprotein cholesterol, ratio of total cholesterol to high densit y lipoprotein and ratio of high density lipoprotein to low density lipoprot ein cholesterol, systolic and diastolic blood pressure), were studied in 16 5 men and 202 women aged between 40 and 69 years living in an urban area of Cambridge, UK. Inter-correlations between the anthropometric measures vari ed between 0.34 and 0.92 and were generally higher in males than females. T ests of homogeneity of the five correlation coefficients for each risk fact or revealed no significant heterogeneity for males, but significant differe nces for high density lipoprotein and ratio of total cholesterol to high de nsity lipoprotein were found in females. Waist to hip ratio showed the high est correlations with the risk factors in women (3 out of 7), but no consis tent pattern was found for males. Males had significantly lower cholesterol , low density lipoprotein cholesterol levels than females for any given wai st to hip ratio and conicity index, waist circumference and waist to height ratio. In addition, men also had lower total cholesterol to high density l ipoprotein cholesterol and high density lipoprotein cholesterol to low dens ity lipoprotein cholesterol levels for waist to hip ratio or conicity index .