Cholesterol
PHYSICIANS ARE AWARE OF METABOLIC SYNDROME BUT DO NOT FULLY UNDERSTAND – (01-26-08)
Metabolic syndrome, its preeminent clusters, incident coronary heart disease and all-cause mortality
Despite the vast amount of research, few give Metabolic Syndrome the respect it deserves. I personally believe that this is because while many physicians are aware of metabolic syndrome, by not reading current literature they may not fully understand the full breadth of this condition.
Let’s put it in terms of this study. When we talk about relative risk, it gives us an idea of how much something (in this case, having MetS) increases your risk of a disease. Now, if the rates of a particular disease are already pretty high in the general population (such as with heart disease), then the risk becomes more important.
In this study, those patients having all 5 components of MetS (high BP, low HDL, high triglycerides, increased blood glucose and increased waist-to-hip ratio) the relative risk was a whopping 6.24 time higher. There’s no beating around the bush here. This is a dangerous condition and needs to be treated as such.
