Search

This article discusses findings of a study which evaluated and compared the epidemiological and clinical features of the metabolic syndrome in the Uygur and Kazak ethnic populations. The metabolic syndrome, which has been defined as a clustering of insulin resistance, hypertension, and dyslipidemia, has become a major public health issue worldwide. Previous studies have shown that the prevalence of hypertension and diabetes was significantly different between the Uygur and Kazak populations, the two major minorities in Xinjiang. The study reported a difference in distributions of the metabolic syndrome among ethnicities that was similar to previous studies. African Americans had a higher age-adjusted prevalence of hypertension, and Mexican-Americans had a higher age-adjusted prevalence of hyperglycemia. It is interesting that the different prevalence of hypertension and diabetes in the two ethnic populations with the same body-mass index (BMI) levels does not seem to be associated with obesity. Further analysis suggested that even with the same BMI, both Uygur males and females had a significantly greater waist-to-hip ratio than Kazak people.