Elevated remnant cholesterol was associated with the increased metabolically unhealthy obesity risk in Chinese youth.

Abstract

Metabolically unhealthy obesity is characterized by the presence of cardiovascular metabolic risks such as hypertension, dyslipidemia, and hyperglycemia. Research has shown a correlation between remnant cholesterol (RC) concentrations and abdominal obesity in children. However, the effect of RC concentration on metabolically unhealthy obesity remains unclear. This study included 3114 Chinese adolescents who received health check-ups. We used logistic regression models and receiver operating characteristic analysis to evaluate the correlation between RC concentration and metabolically unhealthy obesity in a cross-sectional design. After controlling for possible confounding variables, we found that individuals in the top and fourth quintiles of RC concentrations had a significantly higher likelihood of developing metabolically unhealthy obesity compared to those in the bottom quintile (ORs, 4.810 and 1.836; 95% CIs, 3.209-7.212 and 1.167-2.890, respectively). The risk of metabolically unhealthy obesity tended to increase with RC concentration (ptrend<0.001). In addition, boys showed positive associations between RC concentration and both BMI (r = 0.305, p<0.001) and waist circumference (r = 0.306, p<0.001). According to the analysis, the predictive accuracy of metabolically unhealthy obesity was 0.736 (95% CI, 0.690-0.781) for boys and 0.630 (95% CI, 0.573-0.687) for girls. The ideal prediction threshold was 0.66 for boys and 0.59 for girls. Our findings indicate that elevated RC concen-tration is linked to a higher likelihood of developing metabolically unhealthy obesity in young individuals, regardless of other known risk factors.