Metabolic Syndrome

The metabolic syndrome is a cluster of biochemical and physiological abnormalities, a cluster associated with the most dangerous heart attack risk factors: cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, diabetes and abdominal obesity. Metabolic syndrome is also known as Reaven’s syndrome, syndrome X and insulin resistance syndrome. A quarter of the world’s adult population has this syndrome. Awareness of this syndrome must be raised because people suffering from the metabolic syndrome, three times as likely to have a heart attack or stroke and are twice as likely to die from it compared to a healthy individual, so early diagnosis is important for this ever growing number of patients. Metabolic syndrome and prediabetes are …show more content…
Although there are many other causes that can’t be controlled such age, as you get older the risk of being diagnosed with the syndrome increases as well as ethnicity and family history, metabolic syndrome is especially common in Asian and African-Caribbean people. Many other causes that contribute to the development of the syndrome is stress, lipodystrophy which increases insulin resistance, polycystic ovary syndrome in women as well as Schizophrenia and other psychiatric illnesses due to antipsychotic drug-induced adverse effects. Research is also being done on whether a fatty liver, gallstones and sleep apnoea play a role in metabolic syndrome. Psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis have both also been found to be associated with the development of the …show more content…
The International Diabetes Federation defines the metabolic syndrome as central obesity as well as two more of the following symptoms reduced HDL cholesterol ( 1.03 mmol/L or lower in males and lower than 1.29 mmol/L in females, raised triglycerides (higher than 10.7 mmol/L), raised blood pressure (systolic blood pressure higher than 130 or diastolic blood pressure higher than 85 mm Hg) or raised fasting plasma glucose (5.6 mmol/L or higher. The World Health Organization criteria to diagnose metabolic syndrome is the presence of diabetes mellitus, impaired glucose tolerance, impaired fasting glucose or insulin resistance, and two of the following symptoms: Blood pressure levels higher than 140/90 mmHg, dyslipidemia, central obesity or body mass index larger than 30 kg/m2 or microalbuminuria. The European Group for the Study of Insulin Resistance criteria it to be diagnosed with insulin resistance defined as the top 25% of the fasting insulin values among nondiabetic individuals as well as to fit into two more of the following criteria central obesity dyslipidemia, hypertension or fasting plasma glucose higher than 6.1

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