Health News Archive - November 12, 2004

When the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) revised the Adult Treatment Panel III (ATP III) guidelines in 2001, dysmetabolic syndrome was added as a secondary focus for cardiovascular risk factor modification, but only after low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels are optimized.1 The addition of dysmetabolic syndrome as a focus in risk reduction identified many individuals as at-risk for type 2 diabetes and/or cardiovascular disease who may have gone unrecognized and untreated until much later in the disease trajectory.2-4 Over the past 50 years, dysmetabolic syndrome has been studied under numerous other names (Syndrome X, insulin resistance syndrome, etc.,) and is closely associated with risk for both type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.5-7 * Etiology Central obesity is the cornerstone of dysmetabolic syndrome.8 Other components of the syndrome tend to cluster around central obesity as well.9-11 Hypertriglyceridemia, low high-density lipoprotein choles