Adiposity and Quality of Life: A Case Study from an Urban Center in Nigeria

Objective: To determine relationship between adiposity indices and quality of life (QOL) of residents of a housing estate in Lagos, Nigeria. Design: Cross-sectional survey employing multistep random sampling method. Setting: Urban residential estate. Participants: This study involved 900 randomly selected residents of Abesan Housing Estate, Lagos, Nigeria. Main Outcome Measures: Body mass index (BMI); waist circumference (WC); waist-to-hip ratio (WHR); triceps skin-fold thickness (TSFT); and abdominal skin-fold thickness (ASFT) were measured g Short using International Standard of Anthropometric Assessment methods. QOL was assessed using Short Form-20. Analysis: Data were analyzed using the Pearson product moment correlation coefficient ami multiple regression analysis. Result: The mean age of participants was 37.7 +/- 14.3 years, with a range of 20 to 80 years. The mean values of adiposity indices were 24.1 +/- 4.3 kg/m(2) (BMI), 11.5 +/- 5.3 mm (TSFT), 18.5 +/- 6.2 mm (ASFT), 81.8 +/- 11.2 cm (WC), and 0.89 +/- 0.1 (WHR,). Although the overall mean QOL score was 72.02 +/- 11.9, women had significantly (P<.05) lower scores (70.1 +/- 5.2) than men (73.5 +/- 11.3). There was inverse correlation between QOL and each of the age and adiposity indices. Conclusion and Implications: Quality of life Of the urban-dweller Nigerians decreased with increasing body adiposity and age. This finding suggests the need to further educate the Nigerian public on the association between high body fat and poor health.