Research
Energy balance
Higher baseline BMI and weight gain over 15 years are significant, robust predictors of developing metabolic syndrome, independent of other risk factors.
Maintaining a healthy BMI and avoiding weight gain is the single most important factor in preventing metabolic syndrome. If you gain weight, your risk increases significantly, but you can mitigate this by maintaining regular physical activity.
StrongSupportsVERY_HIGH confidence
Our most robust finding, that higher body mass in young adulthood and weight gain over 15 years predicts development of the metabolic syndrome, confirms previous reports but does so for the first time in a diverse cohort of young adults using the new ATP III definition.
Why this rating
Large prospective cohort, long follow-up, robust statistical adjustment, consistent across subgroups.
Source
Risk Factors for the Metabolic Syndrome
Mercedes R. Carnethon et al. · Diabetes Care · 2004
DOI 10.2337/diacare.27.11.2707
cohort · n=4192Cited 345×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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