Metabolic syndrome in staff of the Maharaj Nakhon Si Thammaraj Hospital: high prevalence of 1 to 2 metabolic components in population

Abstract

Background: The annual health check-up is important in the health assessment of staff at the Maharaj Nakhon Si Thammaraj Hospital. This check-up may reveal risk factors of several diseases, such as heart disease. One important risk factor that can be found is metabolic syndrome (MS). MS is composed of three in five components such as obesity, hypertension, insulin resistance and dyslipidemia. Methods: In this study, all data from the annual health check-up of staff was collected. Information about 1,373 subjects was collected for the year 2008 and 191 subjects had the previous three years’ data of annual health check-ups from the year 2005. Results: From this three-year data, we found that 21 out of 78 subjects (26.9 %) without components of MS in 2005 had become intermediate MS by 2008. There were 10 out of 94 subjects (10.6 %) with intermediate MS in 2005 who became MS by 2008. Every subject was found with high BMI (≥ 25kg/m²). Interestingly, we found a significant increase of AST, cholesterol, TG, glucose, creatinine, uric acid and decease of HDL-C levels (P < 0.05). Conclusions: From these results, we concluded that within three years those without components of MS in 2005 seem to be never became MS by 2008. It means that the annual health check-up may show early stages of intermediate MS and remind staff to control their lifestyle so that if there are without components of MS status they may avoid MS for at least 3 years.