Association between Obesity factors and Homocysteine Levels with the Metabolic Syndrome

Metabolic syndrome and homocysteine are associated with increased independent risk factors of cardiovascular disease. We investigated the difference between the degree of obesity, metabolic syndrome risk factors, plasma homocysteine and anthropometric obesity factors. Totally 398 participated in a medical check-up program were selected for this study. Subjects were categorized into three groups according to the number of metabolic syndrome components present as defined by the NCEP-ATP III criteria; Absent (0 criteria, n=124), Pre-MetS (1-2 criteria, n=220) and MetS (${\geq}3$ criteria, n=54). Body mass index (BMI) is a measure used to distinguish between normal weight, overweight and obesity. MetS presented higher homocysteine than Absent (p<.05) and obesity higher than normal weight (p<.01). When Absent+Pre-MetS was used to classify obese or not, obesty presented higher homocysteine than non-obese (p<.05). Further homocysteine levels positively correlated with weight, BMI, waist circumference, hip circumference and waist-hip ratio (WHR). Especially WHR is not only MetS (r=0.378, p<.001) but also Absent+Pre-MetS (r=0.305, p=0.029) significantly positively correlated with homocysteine. The results of our study indicate that homocysteine is related closely to obesity. Although obesity has not been diagnosed with metabolic syndrome, obesity related with increased homocysteine.