Objective: To investigate the prevalence of metabolic syndrome (MS) as well as the potential predictors in families with familial combined hyperlipidemia (FCHL), familial hypertriglyceridemia (FHTG), familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) and normolipidemic families in China.
Methods: The prevalence of MS was identified among 70 different families with 560 individuals aged > or = 20, including 43 FCHL families with 379 individuals, 3 FHTG families with 30 individuals, 16 FH families with 102 individuals and 8 normolipidemic families with 49 individuals. Diagnosis of MS was based on the modified criteria of National Cholesterol Education Program, US, substituting body mass index for waist circumference. Multivariate logistic regression was used to analyze the association between MS and different pedigrees.
Results: MS was identified in 60.7% of the FCHL patients and 71.4% of the FHTG patients. The prevalence of MS in the family members was 36.7% for the FCHL families, 33.3% for the FHTG families, 17.6% for the FH families, and 16.3% for the normolipidemic families, with an odds ratio (OR) of 2.97 (95% CI 1.29 to 7.07) in the FCHL families compared with in the normolipidemic families. Multivariate logistic regression showed an association between apolipoprotein (apo) B and MS with an OR of 1.05 (1.03 to 1.07) in the FCHL families, an OR of 1.26 (1.03 to 1.55) in the FHTG families, and an OR of 1.07 (1.01 to 1.12) in the FH families, independent of variables such as age, gender, apoA1, and LDL cholesterol, but showed no association in the normolipidemic families (P >0.05). Similarly, apo A1 provided an OR of 0.95 (0.94 to 0.97) in the FCHL families and an OR of 0.94 (0.90 to 0.99) in the FH families, but neither in the FHTG families nor in the normolipidemic families (both P >0.05).
Conclusion: Apo B may be regarded as a relevant factor in the assessment of MS in FCHL, FHTG and FH families in Chinese. However, this finding needs to be verified by prospective studies in diverse ethnicities and warrants additional studies to elucidate the possible mechanisms linking apoB to MS.