Direct Bilirubin Levels and Risk of Metabolic Syndrome in Healthy Chinese Men

Serum bilirubin is a potent endogenous antioxidant with anti-inflammatory properties. Several cross-sectional studies have reported that bilirubin was negatively associated with metabolic syndrome. However, in recent longitudinal studies, the relations between bilirubin and metabolic syndrome are inconsistent. Moreover, previous studies mainly focused on serum total bilirubin which is the sum of direct bilirubin and indirect bilirubin. For these reasons, the longitudinal effect of bilirubin subtypes on incident metabolic syndrome was evaluated in Chinese men.

The study cohort involved 1339 Chinese men without metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome was defined by the American Heart Association/National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (AHA/NHLBI) criteria, using BMI for the replacement of waist circumference.

There are 117 incident metabolic syndrome cases (8.7%) during 5 years of follow-up among 1339 metabolic syndrome-free participants at baseline. After adjusting for age, drinking, smoking, physical activity, TG, and LDL-C, the odd ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for MetS incidence in the second, third, and fourth quartiles versus the first quartile of DBil concentration were 1.00 (0.61-1.63), 0.57 (0.32-1.02), and 0.51 (0.28-0.92) (P_trend = 0.031), respectively.

Our findings support the negative association between direct bilirubin and incident metabolic syndrome in healthy Chinese men over 5-year period.