Background: Metabolic syndrome (MetS) has an important implication from a preventive medicine perspective a early recognition and intervention would likely reduce associated mortality and morbidity. To better identify the patients at risk for developing MetS and cardiovascular diseases, we conducted a combined cross-sectional and longitudinal study to shed light on the elevated haemoglobin (Hb) level in the elderly.

Methods: A total of 10 579 subjects were eligible for analyses. In the first part of the study, the subjects were enrolled in the cross-sectional study to find out not only the correlation between Hb and MetS but also the best cut-off point for Hb with greater chances of having MetS. In the second part of the study, we excluded the subjects with MetS at the baseline from the same study group and performed a median 5.8-year longitudinal study.

 

Results: Haemoglobin was significantly higher in the group with MetS than in the group without for both genders. All the MetS components were associated with Hb in multivariant analyses except high-density lipoprotein (HDL) and systolic blood pressure (SBP). In the longitudinal study, Hb was shown to be a good predictor of MetS in both genders. Moreover, Hb was also a good predictor of future cardiovascular diseases, only in women with a hazard ratio of 1.293.

 

Conclusion: This study suggests that elevated Hb at a cut-off value of 14.6 and 13.7 for the males and the females, respectively, was associated with MetS. Therefore, Hb can potentially be used as a marker to stratify the risks of developing MetS for both genders, and cardiovascular diseases in the female population.