Abstract
Background: The magnitude of obesity among young adults is rising worldwide, the Saudi adults are not exceptional. How friendship leads to obesity and the associated problems like diabetes, depression and heart disease remains to be explored.
Methods: this was a prospective cross-sectional study accomplished at the Taibah University where 49 young adults who were closest friends of obese and 33 matched young adults who were closest friends of non-obese were enrolled in the study. Data was obtained by a well-structured questionnaire. For the two groups BMI, RBS and HbAc1 were determined according to the standard methods.
Results: regarding the characteristics of each group no significant differences were observed in terms of smoking, sleeping hours and living with their families (p values were 0.418, 0.883 and 0.293 respectively). The means of BMI, RBS and HbAc1 were compared between the two groups by ANOVA test. A significant association was observed regarding the BMI (P value 0.029), whereas the association of RBS and HBAc1 was insignificant (P values were 0.289 and 0.209).
Conclusions: being a close friend of an obese is significantly associated with obesity. No significant association was found between being a friend of an obese and pre-diabetic status.