The Metabolic Syndrome Real or Myth

Abstract

It is clear from the results that the classification, using these defining variables, of having the metabolic syndrome is less than 10% better than chance (50/50). The number of false positive selections is about three times as great as the true positives which account for only 58% of the actual positive cases. The amount of total variance accounted for by these defining variables ranges between 23% to 34%. When four definers ABCD were used together the results were only marginally better. This weak relationship between MI and defining variables demonstrates that the metabolic syndrome is a very imperfect concept. In its present form its use is likely to give misleading conclusions. Thanks to Professor Y. Ben-Shlomo for access to the Caerphilly data. Assumptions underlying the concept of the Metabolic Syndrome (MS) are implicit rather than explicit. Categorization of patients into have and don’t have MS groups is based on five features, any combination of three or more may be used to determine which category they belong to. These features are triglyceride, glucose, and High Density (HD) cholesterol levels, blood pressure and obesity.