Noubiap JJ, et al. - In order to determine the burden of dyslipidaemia in Africa, researchers estimated the dyslipidaemia prevalence in African adults from hospital-based and community-based studies. General adult population in Africa displayed a high prevalence of dyslipidaemia. Effective detection and treatment of dyslipidaemia should be integrated while making efforts to reduce cardiovascular diseases in Africa.

Methods

• Researchers performed a systematic review and meta-analysis by searching MEDLINE via PubMed, Embase, African Journals Online, and African Index Medicus for studies published between Jan 1, 1980, and July 31, 2017, without language restriction.
• All cross-sectional studies reporting on the prevalence of elevated concentrations of total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, or triglycerides, or low concentrations of HDL cholesterol in adults residing in African countries were examined for methodological quality.
• Exclusion was performed of reports on Africans living outside Africa, studies of individuals selected on the basis of existing dyslipidaemia or those including children and adolescents, and case series with a small sample size.
• For the subgroup analysis, they chose the most frequently used cutoffs in the included studies.
• They derived the pooled prevalence of elevated total cholesterol, low HDL cholesterol, elevated LDL cholesterol, and elevated triglyceride concentrations by using random-effect model meta-analysis.

Results

• For the meta-analysis, researchers included 181 studies (309,207 participants).
• Population-based studies suggested that in the general population, the pooled prevalence of dyslipidaemia was 23·6% (95% CI 18·4–29·2) for elevated concentrations of total cholesterol with a cutoff of at least 5·2 mmol/L, 41·1% (33·0–49·4) for low concentrations of HDL cholesterol with a cutoff of less than 1·0 mmol/L, 25·7% (16·2–36·6) for elevated concentrations of LDL cholesterol with a cutoff of at least 3·3 mmol/L, and 16·5% (11·8–21·6) for elevated concentrations of triglycerides with a cutoff of at least 1·7 mmol/L.