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(Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. 2006;26:e30.)
© 2006 American Heart Association, Inc.

Letter to the Editor

Optimal Treatments for the Metabolic Syndrome

Dario Giugliano; Katherine Esposito

Division of Metabolic Diseases,, University of Naples SUN, Naples, Italy

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

To the Editor:

We read with interest the review of Blaschke et al¹ dealing with obesity and the interrelated disorders of the metabolic syndrome as forerunners of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. To date, chronic diseases represent a huge proportion of human illness, as cardiovascular diseases, various forms of cancer, and diabetes combine to make up nearly 70% of all deaths in the U.S.² Obesity is supposed to be one main risk factor underlying these conditions. Lifestyle changes, such as unhealthy diets and a lack of physical activity, have contributed to a worldwide increase in the prevalence of obesity and the metabolic syndrome.³ Accordingly, low consumption of fruit and vegetables, together with physical inactivity, are now among the top 10 causes of mortality in developed countries.⁴ Abdominal obesity is the body fat parameter most closely associated with the metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular risk.^5,6

Lifestyle interventions are the initial therapies recommended for treatment of visceral obesity and the metabolic syndrome.⁷ This recommendation, however, seems to have been built up exclusively on the assumption that, being key elements in the treatment of all components of the syndrome when they occur in isolation, lifestyle interventions hold the premise to be also an effective treatment for the metabolic syndrome as a whole. The first goal of whatever therapy is the resolution of the disease, where possible. In particular, this may be accomplished by reducing the amount of visceral fat or disconnecting obesity from the metabolic syndrome: in theory, both strategies would lead to a reduced . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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