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Abdominal obesity and metabolic syndrome

Abstract

Metabolic syndrome is associated with abdominal obesity, blood lipid disorders, inflammation, insulin resistance or full-blown diabetes, and increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease. Proposed criteria for identifying patients with metabolic syndrome have contributed greatly to preventive medicine, but the value of metabolic syndrome as a scientific concept remains controversial. The presence of metabolic syndrome alone cannot predict global cardiovascular disease risk. But abdominal obesity — the most prevalent manifestation of metabolic syndrome — is a marker of 'dysfunctional adipose tissue', and is of central importance in clinical diagnosis. Better risk assessment algorithms are needed to quantify diabetes and cardiovascular disease risk on a global scale.

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Figure 1: The lipid overflow–ectopic fat model.
Figure 2: Factors contributing to global cardiometabolic risk.

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Acknowledgements

The work of the authors has been supported by research grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Canadian Diabetes Association, the Heart and Stroke Foundation and by the Foundation of the Québec Heart Institute. J.-P.D. is Scientific Director of the International Chair on Cardiometabolic Risk, which is supported by an unrestricted grant from Sanofi Aventis awarded to Université Laval.

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Jean-Pierre Després has received honoraria payments from the following pharmaceutical companies as a consultant or lecturer: Abbott Laboratories, AstraZeneca, Fournier Pharma/Solvay Pharma, GlaxoSmithKline, MSD, Pfizer Canada/Pharmacia, Sanofi-Aventis and Novartis.

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Després, JP., Lemieux, I. Abdominal obesity and metabolic syndrome. Nature 444, 881–887 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05488

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