Epidemic trends of dyslipidemia in young adults: a real-world study including more than 20,000 samples

Abstract

Abstract Background There is an urgent need to learn more about the epidemiological features of dyslipidemia in youth, in order to address the high burden of cardiovascular disease. Methods This experiment was an observational, cross-sectional study. The samples were collected from 22,379 college students in Xinjiang Medical University. Result The overall prevalence of dyslipidemia was 13.17%, significantly higher in men (23%) than in women (7.2%). Similarly, the proportion of obesity in men (32.6%) was significantly higher than that in women (24.1%). The composition of blood lipids, such as triglyceride (TG), total cholesterol (TC), low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) began to increase gradually from the age of 22 and showed a sharp increase after the age of 30, however a reverse trend was presents in high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C). In terms of the proportion of dyslipidemia in both men and women, low HDL-C accounted for the largest proportion (74%), followed by TG (14.5%). The overall distribution of the incidence of dyslipidemia, so as to the ratios of low HDL-C and excess weight showed a U-shaped trend with age growing, which presents the lowest in the 20–24 age group. Conclusion Our study confirmed the crucial role of low HDL-C to dyslipidemia and reveal the U-shaped trend of obesity and dyslipidemia in young adults. Based on our results, we suggest age 22 to be the key time node for early intervention. This study enriches the limited data available on dyslipidemia and provides a reference for close monitoring and control of risk factors to reduce the occurrence and progression of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease event.