Metabolic syndrome and its relationship with the nutritional status in adolescents - variability of diagnostic criteria

Aims: To determine, through a systematic review, the prevalence of metabolic syndrome among adolescents with excess weight. Source of data: We searched for original scientific articles in the Medline/PubMed database, using the terms "Metabolic syndrome", "Adolescent", "Overweight" and "Obesity", including the last five years until August 2012. The search totaled 119 documents. The titles and abstracts of these were read. Finally, 12 articles were selected for review. Summary of findings: Metabolic syndrome is a set of risk factors for cardiovascular disease, including increased waist circumference, insulin resistance, high triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol levels and high blood pressure. Research shows that the prevalence of metabolic syndrome is significantly higher in overweight adolescents. In this review, the prevalence of metabolic syndrome has reached 40% of obese adolescents. Prevalence rates vary widely, mainly because there are different criteria for diagnosing metabolic syndrome and define overweight in children and adolescents. Conclusions: High prevalence of metabolic syndrome occur in adolescents with excess weight, even with the use of different diagnostic criteria. Given the difficulty of comparing studies, it is necessary to choose more specific criteria, which define the cutoff points to classify metabolic syndrome and obesity in adolescents.