Correspondence between the International Diabetes Federation criteria for Metabolic Syndrome and insulin resistance in a cohort of Italian nondiabetic caucasians. The GISIR database.

In 2005, the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) released a consensus definition of the metabolic syndrome. The definition, intended to provide a feasible predictor of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, includes elevated waist circumference plus two of the following factors: reduced HDL cholesterol or raised blood pressure, triglycerides, or fasting glucose. Insulin resistance is a major pathogenic factor for the metabolic syndrome and may independently contribute to the risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. The results suggest that the IDF criteria have good specificity but low sensitivity in identifying insulin resistance in nondiabetic subjects but fail to recognize a significant number of insulinresistant subjects who have an unfavourable cardiometabolic risk profile.