To study the association between obesity and hypertension (HTN) among type-2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients by analyzing age and gender matched rural population of South Punjab, Pakistan.

This cross-sectional study was conducted at the outpatient department of medicine, Aleena Hospital, Bahawalpur, Pakistan from 1st January 2021 to 30th December 2022. A total of 2538 known patients of T2DM of either gender aged above 18 years with a minimum disease duration of 6 months. All patients had rural residential status. For each male or female patient, gender and age was matched in the next coming patients so that we had equal number of male and female patients corresponding to very similar age. The prevalence of HTN was noted. For Body mass index (BMI) labeling, Asian criteria was used as normal if BMI below 23 kg/m2, overweight if ≥23 kg/m2 and obese if ≥25 kg/m2.

The mean age and BMI were 50.55±11.75 years and 26.20±5.48 kg/m2 respectively. There were 703 (27.7%) patients who had normal BMI whereas 387 (15.2%) and 1448 (57.1%) were overweight and obese respectively. Hypertension was noted among 1069 (42.1%) patients. Hypertension was noted to have significant association with female gender (p

In rural population, female gender had significant association with hypertension, overweight and obesity. Increasing age and duration of diabetes were significantly linked with hypertension and higher BMI.