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A recent study has revealed that more than 41% of adolescents and youth living with HIV across peri-urban Cape Town have abdominal obesity compared to the rates for young people in the general in South African population.
According to the findings of the paper titled Multilevel correlates of abdominal obesity in adolescents and youth living with HIV in peri-urban Cape Town, South Africa, published in the PLOS ONE journal, various factors ranging from the food and built environment, community, family and individual-level factors, were found to be associated with abdominal obesity in this population.
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The research, whose results were released last month, was conducted by the Research Initiative for Cities Health and Equity and the division of public health medicine in the School of Public Health and Family Medicine at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in collaboration with the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre at UCT’s Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine and the Medical Research Council epidemiology unit at the University of Cambridge in the UK.
Lead investigator Dr Monika Kamkuemah said non-communicable diseases were a major problem faced by people living with HIV. She added:
Meanwhile, Dr Keren Middelkoop, co-investigator and lead clinical researcher at the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre, said: “Although this work focused on youth living with HIV in a middle-income context, obesity continues to increase globally. We recommend that more research be conducted in similar settings to generate contextually relevant evidence to effectively turn the tide of the obesity epidemic in rapidly urbanising low- and middle-income countries.”
According to the study, obesity rates have increased globally, particularly in Africa. This, coupled with the HIV pandemic in South Africa, was the syndemic of obesity.
The study reads:
Individual factors, such as consuming whole grains and engaging in weekly physical activities, which were linked to a lower likelihood of abdominal obesity, were found to be associated with a reduced risk of obesity, the study notes.
However, the analysis did not uncover any significant correlations between obesity and daily consumption of unhealthy foods, sugar-sweetened beverages or food consumed outside the home in both crude or multilevel analyses.
The researchers are calling for an intersectoral approach to obesity prevention, intervening at multiple levels, especially at the critical life stage of adolescence.
