() Infection-Associated Dyslipidemia in the Asir Region of Saudi Arabia.

Objectives: -associated dyslipidemia has been reported to be a major risk factor for atherosclerosis and coronary heart diseases. We aimed to investigate the association of the infection with dyslipidemia.

Methods: A retrospective case-control study was undertaken to evaluate -associated dyslipidemia, where -positive individuals were treated as the case group ( = 260) while -negative individuals were considered as the control group ( = 250). The mean ± SD of the age of the patients included ( = 510) was 44.01 ± 13.58 years. Study subjects with a total cholesterol level of >5.17 mmol/L and/or a triglyceride level of >1.69 mmol/L and/or an LDL-C level of >2.59 mmol/L and/or an HDL-C level of <1 mmol/L in males and/or an HDL-C level of <1.3 mmol/L in females were defined as dyslipidemia. Descriptive (mean, standard deviation, median, and IQR) and inferential (-test, chi-square test, and logistic regression) statistical analyses were undertaken using the R-base/R-studio (v-4.0.2)/tidyverse package. Univariate and bivariate logistic regressions were executed to calculate the crude and adjusted odds ratio along with the -value. A -value of <0.05 was the cut-off for statistical significance. We used ggplot2 for data visualization.

Results: The differences in overall mean ± SD ( positive vs. negative) of the cholesterol (5.22 ± 1.0 vs. 5.49 ± 0.85, < 0.01), triglyceride (1.66 ± 0.75 vs. 1.29 ± 0.71, < 0.001), LDL-C (3.43 ± 0.74 vs. 3.26 ± 0.81, < 0.05), and HDL-C (1.15 ± 0.30 vs. 1.30 ± 0.25, < 0.001) levels were statistically significant. The cholesterol and LDL-C levels in ages >60, age = 30-60, in females, and LDL-C levels in males were not significantly different for the -positive and -negative groups. The proportion ( positive vs. negative) of hypercholesterolemia (190/59.9% vs. 127/40% < 0.01), hypertriglyceridemia (136/68% vs. 64/32% < 0.001), high LDL-cholesterolemia levels (234/53% vs. 201/46% < 0.01), and low HDL-cholesterolemia levels (149/71% vs. 60/28.7% < 0.01) were statistically significant. The odds of having hypercholesterolemia (AOR: 2.64, 95%CI: 1.824-3.848, < 0.001), hypertriglyceridemia (AOR: 3.24, 95%CI: 2.227-4.757, < 0.001), an increased LDL-C level (AOR: 2.174, 95%CI: 1.309-3.684, < 0.01), and a decreased HDL-C level (AOR: 4.2, 95%CI: 2.937-6.321, < 0.001) were 2.64, 3.24, 2.17, and 4.2 times higher in the -infected individuals as compared with the -uninfected group.

Conclusion: Our results demonstrate that an enhanced risk of dyslipidemia is associated with the infection, which can aggrandize the atherosclerosis process. The evaluation of temporal variation in the lipid profile in -infected individuals is recommended for the effective management of -infected patients.