Association between Obesity and Cardiometabolic Health Risk in Asian-Canadian Sub-Groups

Objectives: To quantify and compare the association between the World Health Organizations ’ Asian-specific trigger points for public health action [‘increased risk’: body mass index (BMI) $23 kg/m2, and; ‘high risk’: BMI $27.5 kg/m2] with self-reported cardiovascular-related conditions in Asian-Canadian sub-groups. Methods: Six cycles of the Canadian Community Health Survey (2001–2009) were pooled to examine BMI and health in Asian sub-groups (South Asians, Chinese, Filipino, Southeast Asians, Arabs, West Asians, Japanese and Korean; N = 18 794 participants, ages 18–64 y). Multivariable logistic regression, adjusting for demographic, lifestyle characteristics and acculturation measures, was used to estimate the odds of cardiovascular-related health (high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, ‘at least one cardiometabolic condition’) outcomes across all eight Asian sub-groups. Results: Compared to South Asians (OR = 1.00), Filipinos had higher odds of having ‘at least one cardiometabolic condition’ (OR = 1.29, 95 % CI: 1.04–1.62), whereas Chinese (0.63, 0.474–0.9) and Arab-Canadians had lower odds (0.38, 0.28–0.51). In ethnic-specific analyses (with ‘acceptable ’ risk weight as the referent), ‘increased ’ and ‘high ’ risk weight categories were the most highly associated with ‘at least one cardiometabolic condition ’ in Chinese (‘increased’: 3.6, 2.34–5.63; ‘high’: 8.9, 3.6