ABSTRACT
Arterial hypertension is often part of a larger constellation of anthropometric and metabolic abnormalities that includes abdominal (or visceral) obesity, characteristic dyslipidemia [low high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and high triglycerides], glucose intolerance, insulin resistance (IR), and hyperuricemia. These features occur simultaneously to a higher degree than would be expected by chance alone, supporting the existence of a discrete disorder, the so-called metabolic syndrome (MS). The MS is currently considered to be a cluster of metabolic and cardiovascular risk factors that confer an increased risk of cardiovascular events attributed to, in part, the individual risk factors that concur in defining it, and in part to a cluster of other factors, such as the proinflammatory state, impaired fibrinolysis, and oxidative stress that usually goes along with it.
