Cardiovascular disease risk factors in a Nigerian population with impaired fasting blood glucose level and diabetes mellitus

Background Diabetes is a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) and there are reports of increasing prevalence of prediabetes in Nigeria. This study therefore characterised CVDs risk factors in subjects with impaired fasting glucose (IFG) and diabetes. Methods Data from 4 population-based cross-sectional studies on 2447 apparently healthy individuals from 18 - 89 years were analysed. Anthropometric, blood pressure and biochemical parameters were collected and classified. Individuals with IFG (prediabetes) and diabetes were merged each for positive cases of dyslipidaemia, high blood pressure (HBP) or obesity. Optimal Discriminant and Hierarchical Optimal Classification Tree Analysis (HO-CTA) were employed. Results Overall prevalence of IFG and diabetes were 5.8% (CI: 4.9 – 6.7%) and 3.1% (CI: 2.4 – 3.8%), respectively. IFG co-morbidity with dyslipidaemia (5.0%; CI: 4.1 – 5.8%) was the highest followed by overweight/obese (3.1%; CI: 2.5 – 3.8%) and HBP (1.8%; CI: 1.3 – 2.4%). The predicted age of IFG or diabetes and their co-morbidity with other CVD risk factors were between 40 – 45 years. Elevated blood level of total cholesterol was the most predictive co-morbid risk factor among IFG and diabetes subjects. Hypertriglyceridaemia was an important risk factor among IFG-normocholesterolaemic-overweight/obese individuals. Conclusion The higher prevalence of co-morbidity of CVD risk factors with IFG than in diabetes plus the similar age of co-morbidity between IFG and diabetes highlights the need for risk assessment models for prediabetes and education of individuals at risk about factors that mitigate development of diabetes and CVDs. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-016-3910-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.