What is metabolic syndrome?
Metabolic syndrome is a constellation of vascular risk factors, including low HDL, or "good cholesterol," high triglycerides, increased blood pressure and blood sugar levels and obesity as defined by waist circumference. Having three or more of those vascular risk factors constitutes metabolic syndrome.
There is also evidence to suggest that when values are borderline high in people with metabolic syndrome, they are still at risk of disease. So in these people the definitions are actually broader than the normal or conventional medical definitions of, say, hypertension or diabetes. In other words, if you have three or more of these risk factors, borderline or not, we know that your risk for cardiovascular disease is higher. And now we know that the syndrome also puts people at risk of stroke. We also suspect that women and minority populations may be particularly vulnerable to this syndrome.
How many people have metabolic syndrome in the United States on average?
It is estimated that metabolic syndrome is present in about 23% of men and 23% of women in the United States.
Can you describe your research?
The study is called the Northern Manhattan Study, led by Ralph Sacco, MS, MD. We followed 3298 stroke-free people, with an average age of 69, for over four years. Forty-two percent of the study subjects had metabolic syndrome, and within 4.6 years, there were 143 first strokes among our participants.
