A Descriptive Study of Atherogenic Indices in Patients Admitted to a Tertiary Care Hospital

Abstract

Introduction Atherogenic indices, as common factors implicated in the pathogeneses of atherogenic dyslipidemias and cardiometabolic disorders, provide inexpensive and less invasive aids for assessing the prognosis of hospitalized patients. Hence, we evaluate the atherogenic index profiles of patients admitted to a tertiary care hospital and correlate them with comorbidities, statin use, and duration of hospital stay. Methodology This cross-sectional study included 412 hospitalized patients aged >18 years undergoing lipid profiling, irrespective of their diagnosis. Their atherogenic indices were calculated from their lipid profile parameters and correlated with their comorbidities, statin use, and duration of hospital stay. Statistical analysis was done using the Mann-Whitney U test and Spearman's rank correlation coefficient tests, with a p-value of <0.05 indicating statistical significance. Results The participating cohort showed a mean age of 56.01±13.32 years. Nearly 63.0% of these had diabetes mellitus, 52.0% had hypertension, 34.0% had coronary artery disease, 16.0% had a cardiovascular accident, and 16.5% reported statin use. There was no significant difference in the distribution of any of the atherogenic indices over any of the comorbidities like diabetes mellitus, hypertension, coronary artery disease, or statin use, except for the non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol distribution, which was significantly associated with coronary artery disease (p-value = 0.0112) and statin use (p-value = 0.0057). Atherogenic indices were not correlated with the duration of hospital stay (p-value > 0.05). Discussion This study suggests that non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol may serve as an indicator of coronary artery disease and statin use. However, other atherogenic indices may not serve as reliable predictors of the duration of a hospital stay.