Metabolic syndrome and health-related quality of life in Iranian population

BACKGROUND: To investigate the association between Metabolic syndrome (MetS) and Health related quality of life (QoL) in Iranian population. METHODS: We used data from the post-intervention phase of Isfahan Healthy Heart Program (IHHP), a community trial for cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention and control. We recruited 9570 healthy adults, aged ≥ 19 years who were randomly selected using multistage random sampling method. World Health Organization QoL questionnaire (WHOQOL-BREF) which contains 26 items was used to assess QoL. It assesses four domains of QoL; Physical health, Psychological health, Social relationship and Environmental issues. MetS was defined based on ATP III criteria. RESULTS: The mean age of participants was 38.8±15.6 years (mean ± SD) and the prevalence of MetS was 22.5%. From all participant 18.2% were illiterate and 13.2% had university educational level. Two way multivariate analyses of covariance (MANCOVA) test after adjusting age showed significant difference between women with and without Mets in regard to physical health and social relations domains, while none of QoL domains was different in men with Mets in comparison to men without it. CONCLUSIONS: After adjusting the role of socio-demographic factors as components of QoL score, no association was observed between QoL domains and MetS in men, while only social relations and physical health scores were higher in women with Mets compared to those without Mets. Other variety of health-related QoL assessment tools or definitions of MetS may show different relationship in the Iranian socio-cultural context.