Objective To examine the relationship between obesity and the prevalence of main chronic diseases among adult residents in Hainan province and to provide references for the prevention and control of chronic diseases.

Methods We conducted a questionnaire survey, physical examination, and laboratory detection among 4 697 adult residents (≥18 years) recruited at national disease surveillance sites in 8 prefectures or counties of Hainan province using stratified multistage random sampling between January 2014 and October 2015.

Results Among the participants, 345 and 1 916 were identified with obesity and central obesity, with the prevalence rates of 7.34% and 40.79%, respectively; the detected prevalence rate was 24.38% (number of patients: 1 145) for hypertension, 11.73% (551) for diabetes, and 36.26% (1 703) for dyslipidemia. The results of unconditional multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that the obese participants had significantly increased risk of hypertension (odds ratio OR = 3.0, 95% confidence interval 95% CI: 2.2 – 4.0), diabetes (OR = 2.1, 95% CI: 1.5 – 3.0), and dyslipidemia (OR = 2.1, 95% CI: 1.6 – 2.7) and the participants with central obesity had significantly increased risk of hypertension (OR = 1.6, 95% CI: 1.3 – 2.0), diabetes (OR = 2.0, 95% CI: 1.6 – 2.6), and dyslipidemia (OR = 1.7, 95% CI: 1.5 – 2.1) compared to the participants with normal body weight after adjusting potential confounding factors such as gender, age, nationality, education, marital status and residence. Among the participants, population attributable risk percentage (PAR%) of hypertension, diabetes, and blood lipid abnormality were 74.18%, 63.43%, and 68.34% for obesity and 70.83%, 69.57%, and 67.59% for central obesity, respectively.

Conclusion Obesity is a major risk factor for hypertension, diabetes, and dyslipidemia and aggravates the burden of these chronic diseases among the residents in Hainan province.