Searchable abstracts of presentations at key conferences in endocrinology
Endocrine Abstracts (2009) 20 P517

ECE2009 Poster Presentations Paediatric Endocrinology (18 abstracts)

Serum nitric oxide metabolites and clustering of metabolic syndrome components in paediatrics: an exploratory factor analysis

Asghar Ghasemi , Saleh Zahedi-Asl & Fereidoun Azizi


Endocrine Physiology Laboratory, Research Institute for Endocrine Sciences, Endocrine Research Center, Shahid Beheshti University (MC), Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran.


Objective: To determine risk factor pattern of the metabolic syndrome (MetS) and its association with serum nitric oxide metabolites (NOx) in children and adolescents.

Subjects and methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out in 409 male and 442 female children and adolescents aged 4 to 19 years. The ethical committee of our institute approved the study. The MetS was defined according to modified ATPIII criteria and factor analysis was used to examine the risk factor pattern of the MetS in entire population and within strata of sex, MetS, and obesity.

Results: The prevalence of MetS was 10.8 and 10.0% in males and females respectively. Subjects with MetS had higher age-and-sex adjusted NOx compared to those without MetS (25.2 vs 27.9, P=0.04). Age-and-sex-adjusted odds ratio of having MetS was significantly higher in the upper quartile of NOx compared to the lower quartile (2.2, 95% CI: 1.1–4.7, P=0.029). In the entire study population, three factors were identified including blood pressure/obesity, lipid/obesity, and glucose/NOx; factors that explain 59.9% of the total variance in the data. After stratifying analyses for sex, again three factors were retained in both genders however, NOx was loaded in two factors in males. In subjects without MetS and those who had normal weight, NOx constituted a separate factor while in subjects with MetS and those who were overweight or obese, it loaded with FPG and/or BMI.

Conclusions: Serum NOx was associated with MetS in children and adolescents; in addition, serum NOx was loaded with other MetS components especially fasting glucose in the cluster analysis of metabolic risk factors and it may have a unifying role in clustering of MetS components, at least in male subjects.

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