Metabolic syndrome among police officers in a police station from the city of Aracaju, Sergipe State, Brazil

Abstract

Aims: To assess the prevalence of metabolic syndrome and its components in the military officers of a police unit in Aracaju, Sergipe.

Methods: A cross-sectional study involving a military police unit located in Aracaju, capital of Sergipe state, Brazil, was conducted in the period June-July 2016. All active military policemen in the unit who agreed to participate were selected for the study. To participate, they were asked to sign the consent form and should not be on leave, departure, vacation, or transfer process to another unit. For data collection a questionnaire with demographic information was used, and a form was filled with anthropometric data and results of laboratory tests carried out during the medical routine periodic review. Metabolic syndrome was defined according to criteria of the National Cholesterol Education Program's Adult Treatment Panel III. Univariate analysis was performed to examine associations between the variables of interest, using the Pearson's chi-square test and adopting the value of p< 0.05 as statistically significant.

Results: During the study period 115 military policemen were stationed in the unit under study and 96 (83.5%) among them met the criteria for inclusion in the study. Of these, the majority were male (96.6%) with children (84.4%), married (52.2%), had education level through high school (35.4%), self-reported brown (61.5%), earned between five and six minimum wage (42.7%), were aged between 36 and 45 years (59.1%), and were soldiers (53.1%). A total of seven (7.3%) among the study participants had metabolic syndrome. Regarding the components of metabolic syndrome, increased waist circumference indicating risk for cardiovascular disease was identified in 34.4% of the participants; overweight was identified in 57.3%; hypertension in 11.5%; high triglycerides in 29.5%; decreased level of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol in 60.4%; and high fasting blood glucose in 31.3%. The corporal rank was associated with metabolic syndrome: a military with corporal rank had a risk eleven times higher of having criteria for metabolic syndrome compared to other ranks (odds ratio 11.86; 95% confidence interval 10.88-12.84; p=0.005).

Conclusions: The military policemen of the investigated sample had a lower prevalence of metabolic syndrome when compared to other Brazilian studies. The corporal rank had a higher risk of developing metabolic syndrome, which should be investigated in more depth by studies that look for the relationship between functional characteristics of each military rank and presence of clinical and laboratory components of metabolic syndrome.