[Metabolic syndrome with vascular risk and arterial hypertension]

Hypertension is associated with metabolic disturbances that may be related to hyperinsulinemia, both resulting from our lifestyle. Insulin resistance generated by central obesity, and complex relations with sympathetic activity, dyslipemia, atherosclerosis, sodium retention, altered vascular reactivity and hypertension, lead to pathophysiological connections, that are still to be understood. Even if obesity and hypertension were not related through hyperinsulinemia, the metabolic syndrome increases either vascular risk or hypertension, and it has to be re-evaluated whether essential hypertension is an adequate diagnosis for these patients.