Metabolic Syndrome May Be in the Genes

Your risk of developing metabolic syndrome -- a group of factors linked to heart disease and diabetes -- increases if you have five common gene variations, researchers say.

But one additional variant may still protect you from the condition, they add.

People with metabolic syndrome run four times the risk of heart disease and seven times the risk of diabetes as those without the condition. Metabolic syndrome is usually found in people with three of these symptoms: abdominal obesity, high blood triglyceride levels, lower levels of "good" HDL cholesterol, elevated blood pressure and elevated fasting blood glucose.

According to the June issue of Human Molecular Genetics , nutrition researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found the variations on the CD36 gene, located in a part of chromosome 7 previously associated with metabolic syndrome in other studies.

This linkage is important, because as the population of obese ...