Metabolic Syndrome

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Abstract
The metabolic syndrome is a cluster of cardiovascular risk factors that is frequently associated with insulin resistance. Although it is synonymous with the “insulin resistance syndrome,” not all patients with the metabolic syndrome will have insulin resistance (1). In 2001, the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) developed operational criteria to make a diagnosis of the metabolic syndrome based on clinical grounds and commonly used laboratory tests that are frequently carried out in an office practice (2). The importance of the metabolic syndrome was further highlighted in 2001 with the approval of an ICD-9 code (277.7) for the metabolic syndrome by the National Center for Health Statistics. Since then, the metabolic syndrome has received considerable attention in the research setting, but its impact in clinical practice is unclear. In this issue of Diabetes Care , Ford (3) reports that the syndrome is rarely, if ever, recorded as a diagnosis in clinical practice, as assessed from two large national databases. While interesting and important to document, this finding is not surprising for several reasons. First, the analysis was based on data collected in 2002 and 2003, very …