Prevalence of the metabolic syndrome in Caucasian obese children and adolescents: comparison between three different definition criteria.

摘要

Childhood and adolescent obesity is an important world reality, due to its progressively increasing prevalence and associated morbidities . Several studies showed that severe obesity is strictly associated with the metabolic syndrome (MS), which represents the major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes . The MS encompasses the clustering of several anthropometric and metabolic parameters (BMI, waist circumference, blood pressure, total- and HDL-cholesterol, triglycerides, fasting glucose, etc.), variously combined in-between. We evaluated the prevalence of MS in Caucasian obese children and adolescents by comparing three different definitions of MS for children, which were characterized by the use of international - Weiss's et al. and Cook's et al. - or nationwide-specific cut-off points recently defined by the Italian Society for Pediatrics (ISP) .