Journal of General Practice

Background: Prevalence of metabolic syndrome is rapidly increasing and adolescents’ lifestyle including dietary; smoking, alcohol consumption, physical inactivity and sedentary habits are major risk factors for developing metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular diseases. The study aimed to investigate the effects of behavioural change and communication on lifestyle behaviours on metabolic syndrome.
Methods: Multistage, school-based randomised control trial was done among secondary school adolescents in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The intervention lasted for six months and data was collected using a modified WHO STEP wise approach for Non-communicable Diseases Surveillance and analysed using SPSS version 24. Descriptive statistics were used to organise and describe the findings, Mc Nemar test was used to determine the effect of the intervention on adolescent’s lifestyle, self-efficacy and outcome expectations of behavioural change. P-value<0.05 was considered statistically significant.
Results: There were 413 and 411 adolescents in the control and interventional groups respectively. After six months of intervention prevalence of metabolic syndrome declined from 12.4% to 9.95%; sedentary life of ≥ 2 hr/day declined from 89.8% to 60.6%, alcohol intake declined from 22.6% to 14.8% and smoking declined from 9.7% to 8.5% in the interventional group. The changes were significant p-value<0.001. Adolescents who were involved in moderate or vigorous physical activities significantly increased from 55.2% to 58.6% in the interventional group but remained the same in the control group. Self-efficacy and all outcome expectations significantly improved (P<0.05) in the interventional group. Overweight, triglycerides and total cholesterol levels significantly declined in both groups P-value<0.05 and fasting blood glucose significantly increased in the control group but significantly declined in the intervention group p-value<0.001).
Conclusion: Behavioural change and communication intervention had significant impact on modification of the adolescents’ lifestyle behaviour and is effective in reducing metabolic syndrome in adolescents.