A comparison of components of two definitions of the metabolic syndrome related to cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality in a cohort study in Thailand.

The metabolic syndrome, a clustering of metabolic risk factors, has been reported to be associated with the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) (1). Questions have been raised about which components of the metabolic syndrome are more strongly associated with CVD (2), whether other combinations of the components have stronger associations (3), and the role of waist circumference in the definition of metabolic syndrome in Asian populations (4), where obesity is typically less common than in the West. We address these questions using data from the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) Study.