Ethnic-specific criteria for the metabolic syndrome: evidence from China.

The metabolic syndrome is a constellation of interrelated abnormalities, including dyslipidemia, elevated blood pressure and glucose, and prothrombotic and proinflammatory states (1). Because of the growing prevalence of the metabolic syndrome, several organizations have attempted to set forth clinical criteria for its diagnosis (1–5). The most recent are those proposed by the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) definition (5) and the American Heart Association’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (1). The latter updated the National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III (ATPIII) criteria (2). Both IDF and updated ATPIII criteria emphasized the importance of adiposity in the etiology of the metabolic syndrome and recommended specific thresholds for central obesity in different ethnic groups. Thresholds in the two reports were identical for Asian populations. A significant difference between the two criteria is that the IDF makes central obesity necessary for diagnosis, whereas updated ATPIII criteria did not. Whether the prerequisite of central obesity has any impact on the prevalence or the classification of the syndrome in the Chinese population is unknown. The objective of this study is to assess the prevalence of the metabolic syndrome in the Chinese population using the ethnic-specific obesity definition for Chinese and to compare the agreement of diagnoses by IDF and ATPIII criteria.