Over 30% of African Americans in Jackson Heart Study have metabolic syndrome

Main Category: Diabetes
Article Date: 18 Nov 2005 - 0:00 PDT

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Among the 5,296 participants in the longitudinal observational study of African Americans and heart disease, 36 percent of men and women had metabolic syndrome at the baseline visit.

The prevalence increased according to the age of participants: 15. 5 percent of participants aged 20-35, 38 of those between 45-64 and 45 percent of participants 65 and older. The syndrome was more prevalent among women (40 percent) than men (29 percent). Obesity and high blood pressure were the most common indicators of metabolic syndrome in this cohort.

Also, 44 percent of participants had low HDL cholesterol. It is well known that the individual risk factors of hypertension and obesity are highly prevalent among blacks, but this paper dramatically underscores how frequently they occur together, each factor compounding the risk of the other metabolic syndrome characteristics.

Also surprising is the relatively high prevalence of low HDL cholesterol, since traditionally, it has been reported that African Americans have higher HDL levels than their non-African American counterparts in the US. Available spokesperson: Cheryl Nelson, NHLBI. Study investigator: Herman A. Taylor, Jr., M.D., University of Mississippi Medical Center. Contact: Jackson Heart Study at (601) 368-4650.

NHLBI is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Federal Government's primary agency for biomedical and behavioral research. NIH is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NHLBI press releases and fact sheets can be found online at http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov

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