Metabolic syndrome among children and adolescents from Southern Italy: contribution from the Calabrian Sierras Community Study (CSCS)

Abstract

Among 1657 children and adolescents aged 6 to 14 years (787, 47% girls and 870, 53% boys) from primary and secondary schools in a 14-town Southern Italian community, HDL cholesterol (54 ± 15 mg/dl), triglycerides (61 ± 29 mg/dl), blood glucose (78 ± 10 mg/dl), systolic (101 ± 11 mm Hg) and diastolic (62 ± 10 mm Hg) blood pressures, waist circumference (WC) (66 ± 10 cm) and WC/height (0.46 ± 0.006) and triglycerides/HDL cholesterol (1.31 ± 0.99) ratios were measured. The distributions were similar in both genders. Age did not affect triglycerides/HDL cholesterol ratio, whereas there was a slightly positive correlation (p<0.00001) between WC/height and triglycerides/HDL cholesterol ratios. We present individual gender and age specific percentile distributions (as Supplementary materials). Using percentile cut-offs (≤ 10th for HDL cholesterol and ≥ 90th for the other components), there were 183 (11%) children or adolescents with low HDL cholesterol, 162 (9.77%) with high triglycerides, 178 (10.74%) with high blood glucose, 178 (10.74%) with high WC, 244 (20.76%) with high systolic or diastolic BP and 126 (7.6%) with high systolic and diastolic BP. Abnormally high BP was seen in 470 (28.36%) children or adolescents. Using abnormal percentile values of 3 of 5 of its components, metabolic syndrome (MS) was diagnosed in 70 (4.2%) subjects, similarly in both genders. To assess out-of-limit distributions of all 5 individual MS components in children and adolescents gender- and age-distributions derived from local epidemiological data should be used: these distributions are presented and they might now be used both for comparative and applicative purposes at least in Southern Europe.

Keywords: 6–14years; Adolescents; Children; Metabolic syndrome; Quantile distributions.