Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Bariatric surgery (BS) candidates display several nutritional deficiencies that can aggravate after surgery. Metabolic syndrome (MS) is a cluster of cardiovascular risk factors with several disturbed metabolic pathways. Therefore, individuals with MS submitted to BS are probably more prone to nutritional deficiencies.

Objective: To evaluate the prevalence of nutritional deficiencies and eventual differences between BS candidates with and without MS.

Materials and methods: Retrospectively, databases of 385 patients who underwent BS between 01/2011 and 07/2015 were analyzed. Nine subjects were excluded due to missing data on MS parameters. Subjects with ≥3 criteria according to the NCEP ATP III report were classified as having MS.

Results: A total of 181 individuals with MS (150 females, body mass index (BMI) 44.56±6.4, mean age 45.14±10.9) and 195 without MS (174 females, BMI 42.98±5.9, mean age 39.44±9.3) were included. No significant differences were found in iron metabolism (iron/ferritin/hemoglobin), vitamin B12, vitamin D, albumin and homocysteine between males and females with and without MS. However, both males and females with MS had significantly higher levels of folate than individuals without MS. Males with MS exhibited significantly lower levels of magnesium comparing to males without MS. In females, folate was positively associated with glucose (r=0.206; P<0,001), glycated hemoglobin (A1c) (r=0.294; P<0,001), total cholesterol (r=0.153; P=0.006) and low-density-lipoproteina cholesterol (r=0.117; P=0.037). In males, folate was positively associated with glucose (r=0.402; P=0.003), A1c (r=0.362; P=0.012) and triglycerides (r=0.372; P=0.007), whereas magnesium was negatively associated with glucose (r=−0.437; P=0.01) and A1c (r=−0.298; P=0.042).

Conclusion: There were no significant differences in nutritional deficiencies between individuals with and without MS. However, in our study individuals with MS presented significantly higher folate levels than individuals without MS. Interestingly enough, folate levels positively associated with lipid and glucose metabolism. The metabolic and clinical significance of our results warrants further investigation.