Síndrome metabólica em portadores da Doença de Chagas atendidos no Sistema Único de Saúde da cidade de Maceió

Abstract

The change in lifestyle over recent decades has been causing a marked increase in the prevalence of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the world. Currently, CVD is seen as a public health problem and the metabolic syndrome (MS) has been identified as one of its risk factors with the greatest impact, especially given the persistent rise in the prevalence of MS, due to the increase in expectation life and action of numerous genetic and environmental factors. An unusually high prevalence of MS or its individual metabolic components have been observed in patients with heterogeneous conditions, such as in organ transplant recipients, patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), patients with Chagas disease and survivors of cancer treatment, among others. To contribute to the discussion of this issue, this paper presents two articles related to the topic. The first article is a review about the presence of MS in special groups. The second article is the result of a descriptive, cross-sectional and analytical study that evaluated the frequency of MS and its components in patients with Chagas disease, referred for cardiac evaluation. Evaluated 166 individuals, of which 31.3% had MS. In relation to cardiovascular risk factors, contributing to the diagnosis of MS, low levels of cholesterol associated with high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol along with measures of abnormal abdominal waist circumference were the components with the highest frequency in the population studied, present, respectively, 62.7% and 42.2% of subjects. In this population, men had only 14% chances of women having MS, in other words, for every 100 women who have MS, 14 men have MS. These results demonstrate a high prevalence of MS and its individual components in patients with heart disease Chagas disease, which are compared in this respect to the general population, with higher chances of progressing to the harmful effects of atherosclerosis.