OBJECTIVEThe aim of this study was to identify the appropriate cutoffs for waist-hip-ratio (WHR) for Kazakh adults at high risk of cardiovascular diseases in Xinjiang.

METHODSA Cardiovascular Risk Survey (CRS) study was carried out from October 2007 to March 2010, with 14 618 representative participants selected, including 4 094 Kazakhs. Complete data on 4 004 participants were gathered. The age span of the participants was from 35 to 88 years old with the mean age as 48.60 years. Anthropometric data, blood pressure, serum concentration of serum total cholesterol, triglyceride, low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and fasting glucose were documented. Prevalence rate, sensitivity, specificity and distance on the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of each WHR values were calculated.

RESULTS1) The prevalence rates of hypertension, hypertriglyceridemia were high, also with higher WHR seen in both men and women. 2) The prevalence of hypercholesterolemia was high with higher WHR seen in women. 3) The shortest distances in the receiver operating characteristic curves for hypertension, dyslipidemia, diabetes, or ≥ 2 of these risk factors suggested that the WHR cutoffs were 0.92 or 0.91 for men and 0.86 or 0.85 for women.

CONCLUSIONHigher cutoff for WHR was needed in the identification of patients over 35 at high risk of cardiovascular disease among Kazakh population.