Metabolic Syndrome More Common Among African-American Women, Than White: STUDY

A new study found that one-third of Americans suffer from metabolic syndrome, a condition where a combination of obesity, hypertension, diabetes, and high cholesterols increase the chances for cardiovascular diseases and stroke.

According to the study, the cluster of heart risk factors known as the "metabolic syndrome," might raise the risk of heart disease more for black women than it does for white women, a new study suggests.

According to the American Heart Association, "When a patient presents with these risk factors together, the chances for future cardiovascular problems are greater than any one factor presenting alone."

Using data collected between 2003 and 2012 from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, Wong and his coauthors found that about a third of U.S. adults age 20 and up could be diagnosed with metabolic syndrome.

Over 13 years of follow-up, about 1,100 of the women were diagnosed with heart disease or had suffered a stroke for the first time.

Among black women with two or three of the metabolic syndrome risk factors, the risk of heart disease was 77 percent higher for overweight women and 117 percent higher for obese women, compared with normal-weight women, the investigators found.

"The cardiovascular disease risk was elevated in black women by the presence of only two or three metabolic abnormalities, to a degree that would require four or more metabolic abnormalities among white women," Schmiegelow, a research fellow in the cardiology department at the Danish hospital, said in a journal news release.

The study was published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.