Published in:
01-09-2005 | Editorial
The myth of the metabolic syndrome
Author:
Edwin A. M. Gale
Published in:
Diabetologia
|
Issue 9/2005
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Excerpt
Once upon a time, no-one knew what diabetes was. No-one doubted that someone with typical symptoms and a very high blood glucose had the condition, but a line had to be drawn between those who had diabetes and those who did not, and no-one could agree where to draw it. The great epidemiologist Kelly West wrote to his colleagues to ask what they were doing, and it emerged that they just drew their own lines wherever they wanted [
1]. The difficulty they all faced was that blood glucose, as measured within a population, forms a continuous gradient between health and disease. Any cut-off between the two will therefore be somewhat arbitrary. …
