Management of dyslipidemia remains the cornerstone for prevention of cardiovascular diseases. We aimed to evaluate the epidemiology of dyslipidemia in northeast China.

This cross-sectional survey was administered on 18,796 participants aged ≥40 years from September 2017 to March 2019 through a multistage, stratified, and cluster random sampling method. Lipid profiles were proposed by National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III. The crude prevalence of dyslipidemia was 35.8%, higher in urban and women than their counterparts (49.5% vs 30.2%, 37.6% vs 33.0%, p < 0.001). The age-standardized prevalence of dyslipidemia was 34.0% (urban 47.9%, and rural 28.9%; men 36.2%, and women 33.4%). The prevalence of high total cholesterol (TC), high triglyceride (TG), high low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) were 14.2%, 17.7%, 5.7% and 11.4% respectively. Noticeably, the prevalence of high LDL-C and low HDL-C in urban areas showed a 2.2-fold and 6.3-fold increase over the rural areas (9.3% vs 4.2% and 28.4% vs 4.5%, respectively). Among participants with dyslipidemia, 14.7% were aware of their condition; 5.9% were taking lipid-regulating medications; and only 2.9% had their dyslipidemia controlled. Comorbidities including hypertension (63.6%), and diabetes (25.2%) were highly prevalent in patients with dyslipidemia, however, the control rates of those comorbidities were only 40.0% and 6.6%.

Patients with dyslipidemia showed high cardiovascular burden with low control rates of dyslipidemia, high prevalence of coexisting risk factors. Therefore, region- and sex-specific strategies to manage dyslipidemia and related risk factors should be highlighted.