Continuous metabolic syndrome risk score for predicting cardiovascular disease in the Chinese population

Although the metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a predictor of cardiovascular disease (CVD), the current dichotomous definition of MetS cannot be used to evaluate context-specific identification or for efforts to reduce the risk of CVD in the population. In this study, we assigned MetS a continuous risk score for predicting the development of CVD. In total, 3,598 participants recruited from the Jiangsu Province of China were followed for a median of 6.3 years. A total of 82 participants developed CVD during the follow-up period. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to analyze the association between components of MetS and CVD. The results show that systolic blood pressure (SBP) was associated with CVD more intimately (area under receiver-operator characteristic curve (AUC)=0.72, 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.66-0.77) than other features of MetS. When each MetS component was assigned according to the magnitude of regression coefficients in the Cox regression hazard model, the AUC of the continuous MetS risk score (AUC=0.80, 95% CI, 0.75-0.84) exceeded that of the dichotomized definition of MetS (AUC=0.63, 95% CI, 0.56-0.69) (p<0.01). The incidence of CVD increased with the MetS risk score. This prospective cohort study suggests that the use of continuous MetS risk score would significantly improve the capability for predicting the development of CVD compared to current definition of MetS. Further, the appropriate cut-off points need to be verified in other races and regions.