‘STOP’ KIDNEY DISEASE INITIATIVE- Link between Metabolic Syndrome and Kidney Disease
STOP is an acronym for Stop the Obesity Pandemic Metabolic Syndrome, a condition resulting from energy imbalance is a very common public health problem.
Metabolic syndrome is diagnosed in an individual when three of the five components listed below are present:
1. Abdominal or central obesity
2. Elevated blood pressure
3. Elevated fasting plasma glucose
4. High serum triglycerides (TG)
5. Low high-density cholesterol (HDL)
Different organizations worldwide have differing abnormal values for each of these components.
Just like with Obesity and CKD, metabolic syndrome is linked to both the onset and progression of CKD. In a pooled analysis of several studies involving almost 30,000 patients done in the USA, the authors found that metabolic syndrome and its components were associated with more protein loss and decreased filtration from the kidney indicating damage to the kidney. Each of the individual components of the metabolic syndrome was associated with increased risk of chronic Kidney disease. As the number of components of metabolic syndrome increased in an individual, the odds ratio of developing CKD increased. Similar results linking metabolic syndrome with CKD onset has been shown across the world in people of different racial backgrounds.
Some members of the same group in another study of about 25,000 patients with relatively advanced chronic kidney disease (stages 3 and 4) found that the presence of metabolic syndrome was associated with more ESRD. Although it seems logical to conclude that better control of metabolic syndrome components will decrease the rate of progression of CKD, scientific proof in that area is lacking. There should be no doubts though that if the metabolic syndrome rates in the population decrease the CKD rates will decrease.
