The metabolic syndrome—a new worldwide definition

The metabolic syndrome (visceral obesity, dyslipidaemia, hyperglycaemia, and hypertension), has become one of the major public-health challenges worldwide.1 There has been growing interest in this constellation of closely related cardiovascular risk factors. Although the association of several of these risk factors has been known for more than 80 years,2 the clustering received scant attention until 1988 when Reaven described syndrome X: insulin resistance, hyperglycaemia, hypertension, low HDL-cholesterol, and raised VLDL-triglycerides.