[Obesity, hypertension and the lumbar syndrome in workers at the Neoplanta Meat Plant in Novi Sad].
BACKGROUND
Obesity is more and more considered a serious medical problem associated with hyperlipoproteinemia, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, locomotor system diseases not only in the workers with hypertension and increased body fat, but also in the workers with lumbar syndrome. The objective of this study was to examine obesity and trends in frequency of lumbar syndrome and hypertension in workers employed in the meat industry, starting from the premise that obese workers are more prone to developing lumbar syndrome, hypertension or both diseases jointly.


METHODS
The following data: sex, age, years of employment in meat industry, body mass and height were filled out in the epidemiological questionnaire. The sample represented 36% of the statistical mass--475 examined subjects, 285 men and 190 women. The workers were divided by BMI values into the following groups: normal weight, overweight, significantly obese and extremely obese. Frequency of lumbar syndrome and hypertension among obese and normal weight workers were tested, p < 0.05.


RESULTS
The obtained results showed that 34.31% of the examined workers were with normal weight, 43.58% overweight, 20.84% significantly obese and 1.26% extremely obese. Tested occurrence of lumbar syndrome among normal and overweight workers, value chi 2 = 2.80, showed no significant difference, while there was difference in hypertension chi 2 = 11.7 and in both diseases jointly chi 2 = 12.25. However, significant frequency of lumbar syndrome, chi 2 = 5.26, hypertension, chi 2 = 39.72 and both diseases jointly chi 2 = 37.25 was found among normal weight and obese workers.


CONCLUSIONS
It should be pointed out that increase in body mass leads to significant increase in both diseases jointly, not just hypertension. The absence of significant difference of lumbar syndrome, chi 2 = 2.80, is to be associated with the shorter length of service. On determining the share of lumbar syndrome in absenteeism the relation of obesity and imbalanced nutritional patterns has to be taken into consideration.


CONCLUSIONS
With the increase of body mass, frequency of occurrence of hypertension and lumbar syndrome accompanied with hypertension increases too.
Ivanov
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Ivanov
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D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006973:Hypertension / Q000209:etiology*; D017116:Low Back Pain / Q000209:etiology*; D008297:Male; D008462:Meat-Packing Industry; D009765:Obesity / Q000150:complications*; D009784:Occupational Diseases / Q000209:etiology; D016272:Occupational Health; D015022:Yugoslavia