Assessment of metabolic syndrome in Kashmiri population with type 2 diabetes employing the standard criteria's given by WHO, NCEPATP III and IDF.

BACKGROUND: Around 20-25 percent of the world's adult populations have the metabolic syndrome and they are twice as likely to die from heart attack or stroke compared with people without the syndrome. The World Health Organization proposed a definition for the metabolic syndrome in 1998 and later on NCEP ATPIII and IDF provided new definitions of this syndrome in 2001 and 2003 respectively. Very few studies have compared the different definitions to diagnose the metabolic syndrome in type two diabetics in India while as for Kashmir valley no such documented study has been carried out till date.

OBJECTIVE: To study the prevalence of metabolic syndrome in type 2 Kashmir diabetics and to find out the degree of agreement between three different criteria given by WHO, NCEPATPIII and IDF for diagnosis of metabolic syndrome.

MATERIALS AND METHOD: A cross sectional study was conducted in one of the two tertiary care hospitals of Kashmir, India. About 1000 patients were selected and their demographic, clinical and biochemical parameters were studied after obtaining informed consent from each patient.

RESULTS: Prevalance of metabolic syndrome was found to be highest(84.5%) while using WHO definition.Kappa statistic between WHO, ATP III and WHO, IDF definitions was 0.697 (95% CI 0.637-0.754) and 0.775 (95%CI 0.72-0.82) respectively while the degree of agreement between IDF and ATP III definitions was highest with kappa of 0.851 (95%CI 0.810-0.889).

CONCLUSION: Our study warrants for interventions to prevent the progression towards this syndrome among type 2 diabetics as early as the diagnosis of diabetes is made.