Components of metabolic syndrome and their relation to the risk of incident cerebral infarction

Metabolic syndrome (MetS) consists of 5 metabolic components, which are recognized as risk factors for cerebral infarction. The present study was to evaluate the relative influence of individual metabolic component on incident cerebral infarction. Using a data of 209,339 Koreans registered in National Health Information Corporation, we evaluated the risk for incident cerebral infarction according to the number of metabolic component and each metabolic component for 4.37 years’ follow-up. Cox proportional hazards model was used to calculate hazard ratios (HRs) for cerebral infarction and their confidence interval (CI). The more metabolic components accompanied the worse metabolic profile, leading increased incidence of cerebral infarction. The risk of cerebral infarction increased proportionally to the number of present metabolic components (number 0: reference, number 1: 1.78 [1.42–2.23], number 2: 2.20 [1.76–2.74], number 3: 2.61 [2.09–3.25] and number 4–5: 3.18 [2.54–3.98]). Compared to subjects without metabolic component, the impact of each component on cerebral infarction was relatively higher in elevated fasting glucose (1.56 [1.14–2.13]) and elevated BP (2.13 [1.66–2.73]), indicating no statistical significance in low HDL-cholesterol (1.53 [0.96–2.44]), high triglyceride (1.24 [0.84–1.84]) and abdominal obesity (1.05 [0.63–1.73]). Proportional relationship was found between the number of metabolic component and risk of cerebral infarction. Out of metabolic components, fasting glucose and BP are more powerful predictor for cerebral infarction.