Objective: Metabolic syndrome (MS) is characterized by central obesity, hyperglycemia, dyslipidemia and hypertension. In recent years, many studies have investigated the prevalence of MS among psychiatric patients. However, there is no data about MS and panic disorder (PD) to date. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to investigate the frequency of MS in patients with PD.
Methods: Fifty-nine age- and sex-matched patients with PD (31 female and 28 male) and healthy subjects (35 female and 24 male) were included in this study. Panic disorder was diagnosed using DSM-IV criteria. MS was diagnosed according to the NCEP ATP (National Cholesterol. Education Program Adult Treatment Panel) (1) Abdominal obesity (2) A high triglyceride (TG) level (3) A low HDL(High-density lipoprotein) cholesterol level (4) A high blood pressure (BP) (5) A high fasting blood glucose (FBG).
Results: The mean age of PD patients group was 42.2±12.1 and the mean age of control group was 40.7±12.7 (p=0.491). The frequency of MS in patients with PD was significantly higher than in the healthy control group (46% vs 13%, p<0.001). The differences of MS frequency between PD and healthy group were mainly driven by diastolic blood pressure TG level and waist circumference (WC) (p=0.001 p=0.022 p=0.0016, respectively). In terms of waist circumference, in HDL and FBG there were no differences between the patient and control groups.
Conclusion: The frequency of MS was increased in patients with PD. This was mainly due to higher frequency of increased diastolic BP, TG level and WC.