Relationship of Uterine Fibroids with Lipid Profile, Anthropometric Characteristics, Subcutaneous and Preperitoneal Fat Thickness

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Uterine fibroids (UFs) are the most common benign tumors of the uterus with an unknown etiology, affecting many women of reproductive age. We aimed to evaluate the association between UFs and anthropometric features, subcutaneous and preperitoneal fat thickness and lipid profile. METHODS: This is a case-control study conducted on 212 women who were available in the Al-Zahra specialized referral hospital from March 2018 to March 2019. Study variables including weight, height, waist and hip circumference were measured for all individuals. For patients with UFs, the size, number and location of fibroids were recorded. Also, subcutaneous and preperitoneal fat thicknesses were measured. Finally, the data were analyzed using the SPSS software ver.16.0. RESULTS: The most common complaint was abnormal uterine bleeding (AUB) in both groups. Most of the patients had a body mass index (BMI) of 25-30. There were significant differences between the two groups in terms of age (P = 0.0001) and waist circumference (P = 0.011). Cholesterol levels were much higher in the case group. Only age and low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C) levels in the case group were positively related to developing UFs, such that with advancing aging and increasing levels of LDL-C, the likelihood of experiencing UFs rose by 10 and 1.1, respectively. Also, there were no significant differences between the two groups regarding in either preperitoneal fat thickness (PFT) or subcutaneous fat thickness (SFT). CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that with aging and higher levels of LDL-C, the likelihood of developing UFs rises. © 2019 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.