Friday, August 26, 2005

"Metabolic Syndrome Doesn't Exist"

In USA Today:

The world's leading diabetes organizations Thursday challenged the value of labeling patients as having "metabolic syndrome," a diagnosis based on a cluster of risk factors known to be bad for the heart.

The American Diabetes Association (ADA) and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes said in a joint statement that the syndrome is ill defined, built on sketchy evidence and could distract doctors from focusing on more established heart-disease risks...

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I must respectifully disagree with the ADA (hopefully they won't come and beat me up those pesky roguish endocrinologists). Unfortunately, the metabolic syndrome does exist.

I suspect that it is a consequence of the interaction of obesity with genetics. Some folks are heavier than others when they demonstrate it. Visceral fat is an organ that secretes hormones. Hypertension, hyperglycemia/insulin resistance, dyslipidemia and inadequate fibrinolysis are a consequence.

Alas, all we have is to treat the risk factors (weight loss, exercise, control bp, lipids and glucose). Wait, we were doing that for these folks anyway! I don't see how it can be a distraction.

I would like to see the ADA's opinon on a more real disease like, oh I don't know, fibromyalgia.