Is fatty liver indicative of a risk of metabolic syndrome among non-obese subjects?

Excerpt

Metabolic syndrome (MetS), a complex of interrelated risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD), includes elevated fasting plasma glucose (FPG) levels, elevated blood pressure (BP), elevated triglyceride (TG) levels, reduced high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) levels, and obesity [1]. Obesity seems to be a central metabolic risk factor (MetRF) because insulin resistance, which is generally related to obesity, is a potential pathophysiologic link among MetRF. In this context, obesity, as measured by abdominal adiposity and increased waist circumference, is included as an essential factor for diagnosis of MetS by the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) and the Japanese Examination Committee for Criteria of Metabolic Syndrome [2, 3]. However MetRF were frequently clustered, even among non-obese subjects. Subjects with clustering of MetRF are often insulin-resistant compared with subjects without clustering of MetRF, even though they were not obese. Thus, non-obese subjects with a clustering of MetRF are at increased risk of CVD, as are obese subjects with a clustering of MetRF, or subjects with MetS. Thus, evaluation of MetRF seems to be important for finding such individuals. …