Beijing, China - Almost half of elderly Chinese in Beijing have metabolic syndrome, probably as a result of people there adopting Western diets and lifestyles, a new study shows [1].

And those with metabolic syndrome had a 50% to 70% higher risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) compared with those who didn't have it, Dr Yao He (Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing, China) and colleagues report in the April 18, 2006 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

They also showed that a newer definition of metabolic syndrome—proposed last year by the International Diabetes Federation (IDF)—might be more suitable in Asians than the traditional NCEP criteria.

He et al say this is the first study to examine the relationship between the prevalence of metabolic syndrome and the odds of CVD in a population-based study in China.

They conducted a cross-sectional study in an urban Beijing sample of 2334 participants aged 60 to 95 years (943 men, 1391 women) and looked at the prevalence of metabolic syndrome using two different definitions—the NCEP criteria and the new IDF classification. The latter uses gender- and ethnicity-specific cutoff points for central obesity as measured by waist circumference.

The IDF definition may be more appropriate for Asians than the NCEP criteria, because Asian people tend to have a higher percentage of body fat, particularly abdominal visceral fat, than do white people with the same body-mass index, say He et al.

"Thus, the use of NCEP criteria in Chinese and other Asian populations could underestimate the prevalence of metabolic syndrome and fail to identify many individuals at risk for future CVD."

By the NCEP criteria, the prevalence of metabolic syndrome was 30.5% (17.6% in men, 39.2% in women), but use of the IDF definition significantly increased the prevalence to 46.3% (34.8% in men, 54.1% in women).

The fact that the prevalence of metabolic syndrome was much higher in women than in men is consistent with results from previous studies in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China, the researchers say.

Regardless of the definition used, subjects with metabolic syndrome had higher odds of coronary heart disease, stroke, and peripheral arterial disease. But the odds were higher with the IDF classification than with the NCEP.

"Our study indicates that metabolic syndrome is highly prevalent in the elderly Chinese living in urban Beijing, especially among women. New IDF criteria . . . seem to be more pertinent than those from NCEP for screening and estimating risk in Chinese populations," He et al note.

"Developing effective public-health strategies for the prevention, detection, and treatment of metabolic syndrome should be an urgent priority to reduce the social and medical burden of CVD in China," they conclude.