OBJECTIVE: To describe the prevalence of the metabolic syndrome in children and adolescents, as well as the adopted classification criteria. DATA SOURCE: Systematic review performed by electronic search on PubMed and Virtual Library in Health database. The inclusion criteria were: metabolic syndrome prevalence data in children and adolescents with overweight and obes-ity, and publications in Portuguese, English, Spanish and French. The exclusion criteria were review articles and short communications, investigations enrolling participants with genetic, endocrine and immunologic diseases, primary hy-pertension, and acanthosis nigricans. DATA SYNTHESIS: The review afforded 1.226 abstracts, being 65 selected to be read, 46 of them matched the afore-mentioned selection criteria and could be retrieved. They were published between 2003 and 2009 and represented five geographic regions: North America (33%), South America (20%), Central America (4%), Asia (30%) and Europe (13%). The metabolic syndrome reported prevalence ranged from 2.1 to 58.3%. The adopted criteria diverged among the studies, 26 of them used the same components (neutral fat, HDL, glucose, waist circumference and blood pressure), with a median prevalence of 31.2%, without agreement on the chosen cut-off points. In the remaining studies, metabolic syndrome definition included glucose oral tolerance, body mass index, serum cholesterol, and HOMA-IR index. CONCLUSIONS: The metabolic syndrome prevalence among children and adolescents with obesity or overweight reported in the literature showed a wide variability. There was heterogeneity, regarding born the variables chosen to define the presence of metabolic syndrome and their respective cut-off points.
metabolic syndrome X; child; adolescent; obesity; prevalence
