What are the health implications of having the metabolic syndrome?
People with metabolic syndrome are at increased risk of cardiovascular disease, being twice as likely to die from, and three times as likely to have a heart attack or stroke compared to people without the syndrome. People with metabolic syndrome have a five fold greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes (if not already present), a condition which is strongly associated with cardiovascular disease, as up to 80 per cent of the almost 200 million adults globally with diabetes will die of cardiovascular disease. It is the exact nature of the cluster which appears to bring additional risk over and above that which would be expected from each of the components (high triglycerides when measuring cholesterol, for example). This puts metabolic syndrome and diabetes way ahead of HIV/AIDS in morbidity and mortality terms yet the problem is not as well recognized.
