Metabolic syndrome and different obesity phenotypes in the elderly women population: Iran’s Health System on aging

BACKGROUND: Current literature has been focused on types of obesity with normal BMI (body mass index), but metabolically unhealthy.This study evaluates the prevalence of metabolical phenotypes of obesity. We also identified the best obesity index in predicting the components of metabolic syndrome (MetS). METHODS: A cross-sectional study has been conducted on 164 women over 60 years. Anthropometric parameters, body fat percentage (%BF), and biologic criteria were measured to assess the types of obesity. Unhealthy metabolic was defined by modified Adult Treatment Panel III, and obesity based on BMI≥25.ANOVA and logistic regression were utilized for the association of MetS components and obesity phenotypes, and linear regression logistic for finding the best MetS related obesity index. RESULTS: The prevalence of metabolically unhealthy was 45.7%, out of which 33.3% was among the individuals with normal BMI.Logistic regression has shown that triglyceride (TG) (OR=3.30, p<0.001) and high density lipoprotein (HDL-C) (OR=2.15,p<0.01) was independently related to metabolically healthy and normal weight(MHNW) phenotype. Moreover, TG (OR=3.92,p<0.001), HDL-C (OR=2.18,p<0.001), fasting blood glucose(FBG) (OR=1.73,p<0.01) and waist circumference(WC) (OR=3.18,p<0.001) are correlated significantly with metabolically unhealthy and overweight/obese (MUO) and also TG (OR=2.88,p<0.001) and WC (OR=2.67,p<0.001) with metabolically unhealthy and overweight/obese(MHO).WC followed by %body fat (BF) showed to be highly correlated with the prognosis of MetS components. CONCLUSIONS: There is a high prevalence of unhealthy metabolic among the elderly women,even with normal weight.There were different associations between MetS components and various obesity phenotypes.TG was the most powerful indicator for the prognosis of unhealthy metabolic phenotypes which was independently correlated with the WC, %BF and BMI.