The Study of the Incidence of Metabolic Syndrome and its Indices in Welders in Rafsanjan in 2018 (A Descriptive Study)

Welders are exposed to different chemical damaging factors such as fumes, gases and dusts caused by welding. Some studies have referred to a possible association between occupational exposure and engaging with metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is a set of factors such as abdominal obesity, high blood pressure (hypertension), high blood sugar, high triglycerides and High-density lipoprotein (HDL) levels that are a fundamental risk factor for diabetes, cardiac disease and stroke. Hence, we accordingly decided to investigate the incidence of metabolic syndrome among welders in Rafsanjan.

This is a cross-sectional descriptive study performed on 78 door and window welders in Rafsanjan in 2018. Data collection was carried out at two stages, first stage was based on a checklist containing demographic information and the second one included laboratory tests, and finally by recording data in SPSS software, quantitative data was reported as “mean ± standard deviation” and qualitative data was reported as “number (percent)”.

43 out of 78 welders were tested by anthropometric and blood tests, 29 (67.4%) had central obesity. Of these 29, 15 (51.7%) had at least two of four conditions, indicating their metabolic syndrome. After central obesity, the most common factors among these 43 patients respectively were hypertension (55.8%), high triglyceride (37.2%), and high fasting blood sugar (20.9%).

The findings of the present study revealed that about half of the studied welders had at least two metabolic syndrome indices. In future studies, implementation of partnership building strategies and increased collaboration incentives to achieve a larger sample size are recommended.