Association of metabolic syndrome with microalbuminuria in non-hypertensive type 2 diabetic patients

Background: Several studies have shown that metabolic syndrome contributed to the development of incident chronic kidney disease in the general population. We evaluated the cross-sectional association between metabolic syndrome and microalbuminuria in patients with type 2 diabetes. We excluded patients with hypertension to distinguish the effects of metabolic syndrome from those of hypertension. Methods: A total of 642 non-hypertensive patients with type 2 diabetes were recruited. Metabolic syndrome was assessed according to the NCEP Guidelines and Asian-Pacific criteria for abdominal obesity. Results: Among all patients, 37.2% were diagnosed as having metabolic syndrome, and these patients had a higher prevalence of microalbuminuria than those without metabolic syndrome (19.7 vs. 13.6%, p = 0.044). There was a graded association between metabolic score and the prevalence of microalbuminuria (p = 0.006 for trend). After adjustment for sex, age, smoking status, C-reactive protein, and HbA _1c, patients with metabolic syndrome had increased odds of 1.58 (95% CI 1.01-2.47) for microalbuminuria. An increment in metabolic score was found to increase the risk of microalbuminuria by 1.34-fold (95% CI 1.07-1.66, p = 0.008). Conclusion: This study demonstrated that metabolic syndrome was associated with an increased risk of microalbuminuria in non-hypertensive patients with type 2 diabetes.