DOI: 10.36347/sajb.2015.v03i11.008

Pages: 922-930

This study aims at studying the effect of socio-demographic factors and medical history of recurrent infections, chronic diseases, smoking habits and chronic use of drugs on obesity prevalence in adults. This work was applied on 50 obese subjects visited to the Nutrition Center of Marjan hospital in Babylon province from October 2014 to January 2015. Obese subjects consisted of 39 females and 11 males with age range 20-60 years. This study involved also 30 apparently health subjects (normal weighted) as controls, which consisted of 21 males and 9 females with age range 22-50 years. Body mass index for each subject was estimated, socio-demographic factors and medical history of recurrent infections, chronic diseases, smoking and chronic use of drugs also have been determined in a special questionnaire. In socio-demographic factors, the age, residence, occupational state, educational level were significantly associated with obesity prevalence (p˂0.05), while gender was highly significant associated with obesity (p˂0.001), marital status not associated (p>0.05). In medical history, recurrent infections and chronic diseases were a highly significant associated with obesity (p˂0.001), and chronic use of drugs was significantly associated with obesity (p>0.05). smoking habits non- significantly associated with obesity, and increasing of pack-year unit paralleled to decreasing of BMI.The results provide a good correlation between socio-demographic factors and obesity; and medical history of chronic diseases, recurrent infections, chronic uses of drugs, smoking habits and obesity.