Prevalence and risk of metabolic syndrome in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus: A meta-analysis

Abstract

Purpose: To conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis assessing the prevalence of metabolic syndrome (MetS) in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and the association between SLE and MetS.

Method: A database search of PubMed, the Cochrane Library, EMBASE, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Weipu database and Wanfang database updated until March 2017 was conducted. The pooled prevalence, the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated. Publication bias was assessed with Egger's test method.

Results: In the study of the prevalence of MetS in patients with SLE, 47 studies containing 8367 subjects were included. These studies were published from 2006 to 2016. The pooled prevalence of MetS in patients with SLE was 0.26 (95% CI: 0.23-0.29). In the study of the relationship between SLE and MetS, 24 studies involving 2744 cases and 3028 controls were included. Comparing to control, the SLE patients had high risk of MetS (OR = 1.88, 95% CI: 1.54-2.30, P = 0.000).

Conclusion: The systematic review and meta-analysis demonstrated the prevalence of MetS in patients with SLE was 26% and the patients with SLE were more prone to having MetS than the control population. The analysis was a basic summary of all relevant researches and provided valuable evidence for prevention and treatment.

Keywords: association; meta-analysis; metabolic syndrome; prevalence; systemic lupus erythematosus.