Metabolic Syndrome May Worsen Outcomes in Chronic Kidney Disease

MONDAY, Aug. 9, 2021 (HealthDay News) — Metabolic syndrome may increase the risk for all-cause mortality and cardiovascular events in patients with moderate chronic kidney disease (CKD), according to a study published Aug. 3 in the Journal of Internal Medicine.

Lorenz M. Pammer, M.D., from the Medical University of Innsbruck in Austria, and colleagues examined the association of metabolic syndrome and its components (increased waist circumference, glucose, triglycerides, and hypertension and decreased high-density lipoprotein cholesterol) with all-cause mortality and cardiovascular outcomes in 5,110 CKD patients.

The researchers found that nearly two-thirds of participants (64.3 percent) had metabolic syndrome at baseline. During 6.5 years of follow-up, patients with metabolic syndrome had a higher risk for all-cause mortality (hazard ratio, 1.26) and cardiovascular events (hazard ratio, 1.48). The risk increased with a higher number of metabolic syndrome components (hazard ratio per component, 1.09 for all-cause mortality and 1.23 for cardiovascular events). For individual components of metabolic syndrome, the glucose component led to the highest increase in risk for all-cause mortality (hazard ratio, 1.68) and cardiovascular events (hazard ratio, 1.81).

“Although our study uncovered a shockingly high frequency of metabolic syndrome in this high-risk patient group, there’s a motivating message for our patients: each metabolic syndrome component avoided might considerably decrease the risk for a cardiovascular end point or premature death,” a coauthor said in a statement.

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