Prevalence of Obesity in Black Subjects with Type 2 Diabetes in Benin

Background: Abdominal obesity is often associated with type 2 diabetes, especially in the context of metabolic syndrome. The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of corpuscular and abdominal obesity in type 2 diabetes in the two major cities in southern Benin. Methods: It was a multicentric, prospective, descriptive and analytical study that had as framework the center for screening and monitoring of diabetes “Banque d’insuline” of Cotonou, the Polyclinic Atinkanmey of Cotonou and the Internal Medicine Department of the Departmental University Hospital of Oueme-Plateau in Porto-Novo. The study was a six-month period (March-August 2014). Results: We included a total of 400 type 2 diabetics. Women represented 66% of the study population with a sex ratio of 0.52. The mean age of patients was 55.6 ± 10.3 years with extremes of 28 and 87 years. The prevalence of corpuscular obesity (BMI ≥ 30 Kg/m2) was 38.5% in our study population. For the gender, it was 48.5% in women and 19.1% in men with a statistically significant difference (p = 0.0001). The overall prevalence of abdominal obesity in our study population was 87.8%. Almost all of our diabetic women (99.2%) had abdominal obesity versus 65.4% in men (p = 0.0001). All the patients with type 2 diabetes having corpuscular obesity had also abdominal obesity. This abdominal obesity was observed in 80.1% of non-obese diabetic (p = 0.0001). On the contrary, the majority of patients with abdominal obesity (56.12%) had a BMI below 30 kg/m2. Conclusion: This study shows a high prevalence of abdominal obesity (87.8%) in our study population compared with the corpuscular obesity (38.5%). Hence, the importance of measuring waist circumference is more than BMI in diabetic patients.