The Differences of Metabolic Syndrome Risk Factors according to Obesity and Abdominal Obesity in Elderly Korean Women

Abstract

The study was performed to examine the metabolic syndrome risk factors in accordance with the obesity types based on body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference cutoffs. The diagnosis of metabolic syndrome closely adhered to the NCEP-ATP III criteria, and obesity was defined using the WHO Asian-Pacific criteria. We used the data from 591 elderly women, all aged over 65 years. They were divided into four groups: The normal group (n=272), the obesity group (n=124), abdominal obesity group (n=19), and obesity-abdominal obesity group (n=176). The obesity- abdominal obesity group was the most prevalent group of low HDL-cholesterol (p=0.009), hypertriglyceridemia (p=0.025), abdominal obesity (p＜0.001), and metabolic syndrome (p＜0.001). Logistic regression analysis demonstrated that the obesity-abdominal obesity group had the highest odds ratio in predicting metabolic syndrome (OR: 10.638, 95% CI: 6.053∼18.697). Therefore, the obesity-abdominal obesity group was the strongest predictive factor of metabolic syndrome risk in Korean elderly women.