The impact of urbanisation on the cardiometabolic health of Indigenous Brazilian peoples: a systematic review and meta-analysis, and data from the Brazilian Health registry.

Background: Indigenous Brazilian peoples have faced an unparalleled increase in the rate of cardiovascular diseases following rapid nutritional transition to more urban diets. We aimed to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the association between urbanisation (including data from Amazon rainforest deforestation) and cardiometabolic risk factors and outcomes.
Methods: In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched Pubmed, Embase, Web of Science, and Scopus for articles published in any language between the year 1950 and March 10, 2022. Studies conducted in Indigenous Brazilian adults that evaluated metabolic health were included. Data for deforestation was obtained by the Amazon Deforestation Monitoring Project. Cardiovascular mortality was obtained from the Brazilian Health registry. Two independent reviewers evaluated studies for risk of bias, according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses recommendations. The main outcomes assessed were the prevalence of obesity and related cardiometabolic risk factors among Indigenous Brazilian peoples and its association with urbanisation. Summary data were extracted from published reports for the meta-analyses. We calculated pooled estimates of the prevalence of each cardiometabolic outcome by using a random-effects model (DerSimonian-Laird method). This study is registered with the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews, CRD42021285480.
Findings: 46 studies were identified, including a total of 20 574 adults from at least 33 Indigenous Brazilian ethnicities. Meta-analyses of the prevalence of obesity showed that there were higher rates of obesity (midwest region: 23% [95% CI 17-29]; and south region 23% [13-34]) and hypertension (south region: 30% [10-50]) in Indigenous peoples living in urban regions of Brazil, while the lowest rates of obesity (11% [95% CI 8-15]) and hypertension (1% [1-2]) were observed in those in the less urbanised (north) regions of Brazil. The prevalence of obesity was 3·5 times higher in participants living in urbanised Indigenous territories (28%) than in those living in lands with >80% native Amazon rainforest (8%). In meta-analyses that evaluated blood pressure level, there was no incremental change in blood pressure with ageing in Indigenous peoples who lived according to traditional lifestyle, in contrast to those living in urbanised regions. For Indigenous men with traditional lifestyles, systolic blood pressure changed from 109·8 mm Hg to 104·4 mm Hg between the youngest (<30 years) and the oldest (>60 years) age groups, and diastolic blood pressure changed from 69·8 mm Hg to 66·1 mm Hg. For Indigenous women with traditional lifestyles, systolic blood pressure was 100·0 mm Hg for the youngest age group with no changes for older age groups, and diastolic blood pressure was 62 mm Hg for the youngest age group with no changes for older age groups. For Indigenous men with urbanised lifestyles, systolic blood pressure changed from 117·3 mm Hg to 124·9 mm Hg between the youngest and the oldest age groups, and diastolic blood pressure changed from 72·7 mm Hg to 76·4 mm Hg. For Indigenous women with urbanised lifestyles, systolic blood pressure changed from 110·0 mm Hg to 116·0 mm Hg between the youngest and the oldest age groups, and diastolic blood pressure changed from 68·3 mm Hg to 74·0 mm Hg. For the years 1997 and 2019, the cardiovascular mortality rate in individuals living in the southeast region (the most urbanised) was 2·5 times greater than that observed in the north. Conversely, the incremental rise in cardiovascular mortality in the past two decades among Indigenous Brazilians living in the north or northeast (2·7 times increase) stands in stark contrast to the stable rates in those living in already urbanised regions.
Interpretation: The macrosocial changes of Indigenous peoples' traditional ways of living consequent to urbanisation are associated with an increased prevalence of adverse cardiometabolic outcomes. These data highlight the urgent need for environmental policies to ensure the conservation of the natural ecosystem within Indigenous territories, as well as the development of socio-health policies to improve the cardiovascular health of Indigenous Brazilians peoples living in urban areas.
Funding: None.
Competing Interests: Declaration of interests CKK reports research grants from Boehringer Ingelheim, outside of the submitted work. All other authors declare no competing interests.
(Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)