Document Type
Article
Original Publication Date
2012
Journal/Book/Conference Title
Cardiovascular Diabetology
Volume
11
DOI of Original Publication
10.1186/1475-2840-11-128
Date of Submission
September 2014
Abstract
Objective The metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a cluster of clinical indices that signals increased risk for cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes. The diagnosis of MetS is typically based on cut-off points for various components, e.g. waist circumference and blood pressure. Because current MetS criteria result in racial/ethnic discrepancies, our goal was to use confirmatory factor analysis to delineate differential contributions to MetS by sub-group.
Research Design and Methods Using 1999–2010 data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), we performed a confirmatory factor analysis of a single MetS factor that allowed differential loadings across sex and race/ethnicity, resulting in a continuous MetS risk score that is sex and race/ethnicity-specific.
Results Loadings to the MetS score differed by racial/ethnic and gender subgroup with respect to triglycerides and HDL-cholesterol. ROC-curve analysis revealed high area-under-the-curve concordance with MetS by traditional criteria (0.96), and with elevations in MetS-associated risk markers, including high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (0.71), uric acid (0.75) and fasting insulin (0.82). Using a cut off for this score derived from ROC-curve analysis, the MetS risk score exhibited increased sensitivity for predicting elevations in ≥2 of these risk markers as compared with traditional pediatric MetS criteria.
Conclusions The equations from this sex- and race/ethnicity-specific analysis provide a clinically-accessible and interpretable continuous measure of MetS that can be used to identify children at higher risk for developing adult diseases related to MetS, who could then be targeted for intervention. These equations also provide a powerful new outcome for use in childhood obesity and MetS research.
Rights
© 2012 Gurka et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Is Part Of
VCU Biostatistics Publications
Table S1.Proposed Criteria for the Diagnosis of the Metabolic Syndrome in Children.
Comments
Originally published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1475-2840-11-128