Metabolic syndrome (pre-diabetes) is as bad as diabetes for heart attack risk

A study recently published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology is provides more evidence that the insulin resistance and other aspects of metabolic syndrome leading up to but before diabetes has been established can already do sufficient damage to precipitate a heart attack.

"This study examines the risk of acute myocardial infarction (MI) conferred by the metabolic syndrome (MS) and its individual factors in multiple ethnic populations."

The authors evaluated data from 26,903 subjects in 52 countries according to the World Health Organization (WHO) and International Diabetes Federation (IDF) criteria for MS, and correlated them with the occurrence of heart attack to calculate the odds. Crunching the numbers produced these results:

"Using the WHO definition, the association with MI by the MS is similar to that of diabetes mellitus and hypertension and significantly stronger than that of the other component risk factors...The IDF definition showed similar results."

The practical conclusion to be drawn from this evidence is that the evaluation and treatment of metabolic syndrome in general and insulin resistance in particular is mandatory for realistic heart attack risk assessment and prevention.