Metabolic Syndrome (MetS) involves the combined presence of several cardiovascular risk factors simultaneously: obesity, hypertension and alterations in glucose and lipid metabolism. This syndrome increases the risk of suffering from cardiovascular diseases such as strokes and coronary heart disease, as well as type 2 diabetes.
This syndrome is understood to be a primary public health problem since, in Spain, up to 30% of the general adult population suffers from it. Due to the extent of the problem, Rafael Molina, Manuel Romero, Alberto Hernández and Guillermo Molina, researchers at the University of Cordoba’s Department of Nursing, Physical Therapy and Pharmacology, working in collaboration with Cordoba City Hall and Andalusian Health Services, performed this study of the relationship between metabolic syndrome and respiratory dysfunction. What is more, they were searching to understand what kinds of respiratory alterations were most common among patients with MetS and how to prevent them.
This study, published in one of the journals in the Nature group, was carried out on staff at Cordoba City Hall, numbering 1,901 participants. Among the variables under analysis were age and lung age (a respiratory health indicator that provides information on lung condition), gender, profession, anthropometric variables and the presence of metabolic syndrome, or lack thereof, excluding individuals with previous respiratory diseases.
This study demonstrated that people with metabolic syndrome had more aged lungs (lung age was more than 15 years greater than actual age) and double the incidences of lung dysfunction. Besides, people whose waist to height ratio (an anthropometric index of abdominal adiposity and central obesity) was greater than 0.55 had 6.4 more years of lung age and greater risk for having pulmonary dysfunction.
Thus, the relationship between metabolic syndrome and waist to height ratio and the predisposition to suffer from respiratory dysfunction and aging lungs was proven.
With this latest study, this research team added a new certainty to seven years of work, during which they have performed studies on obesity and metabolic syndrome, now including pulmonary dysfunction and non-invasive measuring variables such as waist to height ratios that, according to the researchers, “can be a valid clinical indicator in predicting MetS and lung dysfunction”.
Molina-Luque, R., Romero-Saldaña, M., Álvarez-Fernández, C. et al. Waist to Height Ratio and Metabolic Syndrome as lung dysfunction predictors. Sci Rep 10, 7212 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-64130-0