Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Lead is known as an environmental toxic pollutant and hormonal regulatory confounder associated with obesity. Recent China scientific report shows that blood lead level (BLL) is closely related with body mass index. Therefore, we investigated the association between the prevalence of metabolic syndrome and blood lead levels in healthy general population without hypertension, dyslipidemia, and diabetes.

Methods: We assessed the socio-demographic (height, weight, alcohol and smoking, income, education and living area, waist circumferences), cardio-metabolic variables (blood pressures, fasting plasma glucose, glycated hemoglobin and HDL cholesterol, triglyceride, high sensitivity C-reactive protein), BLL after fasting over eight hours from 1,381 healthy subjects without hypertension, dyslipidemia, and diabetes, among 8,238 subjects in 2017 KHANES (Korea Health Analysis and Nutrition Examination Survey) dataset. Chi-square tests for categorical variables, Pearson’s correlation analysis, student t-test for continuous variables were performed. P-value <0.05 was considered as significant at both sided using by SPSS packages for windows (version 18, USA).

Results: As a total of 1,381 subject (43.22 +/- 0.39 years, female 55.3%), mean BMI and WC were 23.52 +/- 0.099 kg/m², 79.98 +/- 0.285 cm. The BLL was correlated with BMI, WC, age, sex, income, education, living location, alcohol, smoking, occupation, systolic pressures, diastolic pressures, fasting plasma glucose, total cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol. (P < 0.05) The BLL was very significantly correlated with BMI, WC after controlled for age, income, education, marriage, smoking, alcohol, occupation, energy intake. (P < 0.05, P < 0.001) In addition, we found hypertension, hyperglycemia, hypercholesterolemia, and hypertriglyceridemia, high sensitivity-CRP, high glycated hemoglobin, and low HDL-cholesterolemia in higher group than lower group in BLL. (P < 0.05) Furthermore, it was more evident for the significant difference between two groups in women than men. (P < 0.01)

Discussion and Conclusion: As the endocrine regulator related with metabolism, the blood lead level might be associated with body weight. However, the clear mechanism between them would not be determined. BLL was closely related with metabolic syndrome in healthy general population without diabetes, hypertension, and dyslipidemia. Further controlled longer clinical trial would be considered in the future.