BMI-based metabolic syndrome severity score and arterial stiffness in a cohort Chinese study

Background and aims: To investigate the relationship between metabolic syndrome severity z score(MetS-Z) and arterial stiffness(AS). Methods and results: A total of 7621 participants who took three physical examination and brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity(ba-pwv) test from 2006 were enrolled. Cumulative MetSZ(cMetS-Z) was calculated by using blood pressure, triglycerides, HDL cholesterol, blood glucose and BMI. AS was assessed by ba-pwv. Cox regression model was used to evaluate the risk of AS. All participants were divided into four groups according to cMetS-Z(Q1-Q4). The average age of the participants was 43.06 +/- 8.91 years old. During a median follow-up of 6.27 years, 1831cases of AS were identi fied. The incident rate of AS increased gradually from group Q1 to Q4. Compared with the lowest cMetS-Z(group Q1), the adjusted hazard ratio (HR) and 95% con fidence interval (CI) of group Q2 -Q4 for AS were 1.27 (1.09-1.47),1.28(1.10-1.48) and 1.45 (1.24-1.69) respectively. The cubic spline model indicated cMetS-Z had a liner relationship with AS and the cutoff value was lower than zero. Sub-group analysis suggested cMetS-Z was related to AS especially among participants who were younger and without obesity or hypertension or diabetes. Conclusion: Higher cMetS-Z was associated with an increased risk of AS in this cohort community study, and this relationship seemed to be stronger among normal healthy subjects. Registration number: ChiCTR-TNC-11001489. Clinical trial: January 1st 2006, ChiCTR-TNC-11001489 and 2011. (c) 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of The Italian Diabetes Society, the Italian Society for the Study of Atherosclerosis, the Italian Society of Human Nutrition and the Department of Clinical Medicine and Surgery, Federico II University. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).