Prevalence of metabolic syndrome among Vietnamese adult employees.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Metabolic syndrome (MtS) is associated with increased risk of many health disorders, especially cardiovascular diseases. In Vietnam, study examining MtS is meager and especially lacking for the workforce. We estimated the prevalence of MtS and its associated factors among Vietnamese employees. METHODS AND RESULTS: We analyzed secondary data of annual health check of employees of 300 Vietnamese companies from the Vinmec Healthcare System. We used three definitions for MtS: International Diabetes Federation (IDF), National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III (NCEP ATP III), and NCEP ATP III-Asia. Of 57,997 participants evaluated, 48.5 % were males and 66.2 % were younger than 40 years old. The unadjusted MtS prevalence was 8.4 % (IDF), 10.2 % (NCEP ATP III), and 16.0 % (NCEP ATP III-Asia). The age-sex adjusted prevalence of MtS (NCEP ATP III-Asia) was 21.8 % (95 % confidence interval (CI): 21.4 %, 22.2 %). MtS prevalence increased with age, reached 49.6 % for age ≥60. The aging related increase was more remarkable in females than males (prevalence ratio (PR) (95 % CI) for age ≥60 comparing to age <30 years old in males vs. females was 4.0 (3.6, 4.3) vs. 20.1 (17.7, 22.9)). High blood triglyceride (83.4 %) and abdominal obesity (74.5 %) were the predominant contributors to MtS. CONCLUSION: In this relatively young Vietnamese working population, 16 % had MtS with high triglyceride and abdominal obesity being the predominant contributors. These findings emphasize the need for developing effective high triglyceride and abdominal obesity prevention and control programs to curb the emerging epidemic of metabolic disorders in the workforce.

The association between birth order and childhood brain tumors: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

The incidence of childhood brain tumors (CBT) has increased worldwide, likely resulting from the improvements of early diagnostics. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to clarify the association between birth order and CBT. We followed established guidelines to systematically search Ovid Medline, PubMed, and the Cochrane Library for English language studies, published before March 2018. Quality assessment was performed using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale. Meta-analysis provided pooled risk estimates and their 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for birth order and CBT. We identified 16 case-control studies with a total sample of 32 439 cases and 166 144 controls and three prospective cohort studies (i.e. 4515 incident cases of CBTs among 5 281 558 participants). Compared with first birth order, the meta-odds ratio for second birth order in case-control studies was 1.04 (95% CI: 1.01-1.07), that for third birth order was 0.98 (95% CI: 0.90-1.06), and that for fourth order was 0.85 (95% CI: 0.78-0.92). The meta-hazard ratio for second or higher birth order compared with first birth order in cohort studies was 1.00 (95% CI: 0.96-1.05). We found no association between birth order and CBT in both case-control and cohort study designs; the small association observed for fourth birth order deserves further consideration.