Increased incidence of metabolic syndrome in older men with high normotension

Abstract

Introduction: Hypertension and prehypertension are correlated with future cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes. Whether these harmful effects of the blood pressure (BP) could be found in normotensive is of interest. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, totally 2388 normotensive older men aged 65–80 years undergoing routine health examinations were enrolled. To eliminate the influence of age on BP, subjects were initially grouped in each age stratum. Then in each age-stratum, subjects were further grouped into low, middle and high-tertile systolic BP (SBP) subgroups. Finally, all the low-tertile subgroups in each age stratum were gathered to form Group-1. Similarly, Group-2 (middle-tertile) and Group-3 (high-tertile) were also created. Metabolic syndrome (MetS) was regarded as having risks for future CVD and diabetes. Results: Age, waist circumstance (WC), fasting plasma glucose (FPG) and log triglyceride (TG) were independently and significantly correlated with SBP by multiple linear regression analysis. On the other hand, logistic regression showed that Group-3 had significant higher odds ratios (ORs) for having abnormal WC, FPG and TG. In addition, Group-3 presented a 1.55–fold OR (p < 0.001) for having MetS than Group-1. Conclusions: In normotensive older men, the risk for having MetS was significantly associated with higher SBP. Primary prevention of hypertension should be stressed.

Keywords::

• Metabolic syndrome
• normotension
• older men
• preventive geriatrics

Acknowledgements

The authors sincerely thank MJ Health Screening Center in Taiwan for providing the anonymous data of the present research.

Declaration of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.