Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Skin autofluorescence (SAF) has been demonstrated to be associated with long-term cardiovascular complications in subjects with either diabetes or renal failure. Since the metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, the aim of the study was to assess the association between SAF and MetS as well as its individuals components.

Materials and methods: For this cross-sectional analysis, we included subjects 18–80 years of age who participated in the LifeLines Cohort Study. We excluded 2411 subjects who were known to have either type 1 or type 2 diabetes and/or had a serum creatinine >140 μmol/l, and included subjects who had SAF measurements available, leaving 78.799 individuals for analyses. Skin autofluorescence (SAF) was measured non-invasively with the AGE Reader in all participants (Diagnoptics BV, Groningen, The Netherlands). MetS was defined according to the revised NCEP ATP III criteria.

Results: From the total population, 11.619 (15%) subjects were diagnosed with MetS. Subjects with MetS were significantly older but had a higher creatinine clearance (both P<0.001) compared to individuals without MetS. Subjects with MetS (2.01±0.24) had a higher SAF than those without MetS (1.90±0.25) (P<0.001) even after adjusting for age. Furthermore, there was a gradual increase of SAF Z scores (adjusted for age) with increasing number of MetS components (P<0.001). Finally, the prevalence of particularly raised blood pressure and enlarged waist circumference increased with higher SAF.

Conclusion: We have demonstrated that higher SAF levels are strongly associated with an increased prevalence of MetS and its individuals components, in particular raised blood pressure and enlarged waist circumference. When taking these and previous observations on SAF with different clinically relevant phenotypes into account, the AGE Reader could be potentially used as an (additional) screening tool to identify individuals at high risk for developing metabolic and cardiovascular complications.