A proposed simplified definition of metabolic syndrome in children and adolescents: a global perspective

Xin’nan Zong, Roya Kelishadi, Hae Soon Kim, Peter Schwandt, Tandi E. Matsha, Jose G. Mill, Carmelo Antonio Caserta, Carla Campos Muniz Medeiros, Anastasios Kollias, Peter H. Whincup, Lucia Pacifico, Abel López-Bermejo, Min Zhao, Miaobing Zheng, Bo Xi

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is becoming prevalent in the pediatric population. The existing pediatric MetS definitions (e.g., the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) definition and the modified National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) definition) involve complex cut-offs, precluding fast risk assessment in clinical practice. We proposed a simplified definition for assessing MetS risk in youths aged 6–17 years, and compared its performance with two existing widely used pediatric definitions (the IDF definition, and the NCEP definition) in 10 pediatric populations from 9 countries globally (n = 19,426) using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analyses. In general, the total MetS prevalence of 6.2% based on the simplified definition was roughly halfway between that of 4.2% and 7.7% estimated from the IDF and NCEP definitions, respectively. The ROC curve analyses showed a good agreement between the simplified definition and two existing definitions: the total area under the curve (95% confidence interval) of the proposed simplified definition for identifying MetS risk achieved 0.91 (0.89–0.92) and 0.79 (0.78–0.81) when using the IDF or NCEP definition as the gold standard, respectively. The proposed simplified definition may be useful for pediatricians to quickly identify MetS risk and cardiometabolic risk factors (CMRFs) clustering in clinical practice, and allow direct comparison of pediatric MetS prevalence across different populations, facilitating consistent pediatric MetS risk monitoring and the development of evidence-based pediatric MetS prevention strategies globally.

Original languageEnglish
Article number190
JournalBMC Medicine
Volume22
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.

Keywords

  • Adolescent
  • Cardiovascular risk factors
  • Central obesity
  • Child
  • Hypertension
  • Metabolic syndrome
  • Waist-to-height ratio

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