Introduction:

In 2016, the World Health Organization reported that more than 2 billion adults were overweight, of whom 600 million were obese, 347 million had diabetes mellitus type II, and people with hypertension had increased from 600 million in 1980 to 1 billion in 2010. Additionally, 20% of the world’s adult population will develop metabolic syndrome during their lifespan with tremendous effects for their wellbeing and the health systems.

Objective:

To identify social, biological, and behavioral factors associated with the metabolic syndrome in adults to help in the design of health policies in urban environments.

Materials and methods:

We included 300 cases and 675 controls. For cases, the waist circumference (abdominal obesity) in men was ≥94 cm and ≥88 cm in women, and other two factors should be present including hypertension, high glycated hemoglobin, high triglycerides, and low HDL levels. Controls presented only one or none of these risk factors.

Results:

The total prevalence of metabolic syndrome was 30.2%, 33.6% in females, and 25.6% in males. Therefore, females had a higher risk of developing a metabolic syndrome (OR=1.70; 95% CI 1.17-2.47). Being a mestizo also increased the risk of having metabolic syndrome (OR=1.55; 95% CI 1.10-2.19). In contrast, frequent fruit consumption and being a housekeeper were protective factors: OR=0.83; 95% CI 0.69-1.00, and OR=0.58; 95% CI 0.36-0.92, respectively. Logistic regression showed that obesity had the strongest association with metabolic syndrome (OR=7.52; 95% CI 4.79-11.80).

Increasing age yielded a linear trend with regard to metabolic syndrome: the OR for the 40 to 49-year-old group was 4.24 (95% CI 2.20-8.16), for the 50 to 59-year-old group, 4.63 (95% CI 2.40-8.93), and for those over 80 years of age, 5.32 (95% CI 1.92-14.71).

Conclusion:

Obesity was the main risk factor associated with the metabolic syndrome. Our findings can help health policy makers to design interventions for metabolic syndrome control in urban populations in Colombia.

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