Concentrations of Serum Vitamin D and the Metabolic Syndrome Among U.S. Adults
- Earl S. Ford, MD, MPH1,
- Umed A. Ajani, MBBS, MPH1,
- Lisa C. McGuire, PHD1 and
- Simin Liu, MD, SCD23
- 1Division of Adult and Community Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia
- 2Division of Preventive Medicine, Brigham and Women‘s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
- 3Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts
- Address correspondence and reprint requests to Earl Ford, MD, MPH, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 4770 Buford Highway, MS K66, Atlanta, GA 30341. E-mail: eford{at}cdc.gov
Accumulating research suggests that circulating concentrations of vitamin D may be inversely related to the prevalence of diabetes (1,2,3,4), to the concentration of glucose (4,5,6,7,8), and to insulin resistance (4,5,8,9). In addition, vitamin D deficiency may be a risk factor for the metabolic syndrome (8,10), a highly prevalent condition among U.S. adults (11). Much remains to be learned, however, about the relationship between vitamin D status and metabolic syndrome. Because this topic has received scant attention and the available information was derived from a small clinically based sample, we sought to examine the nature and strength of the association between serum concentrations of vitamin D and the metabolic syndrome in a large nationally representative sample of the U.S. population.
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
Between 1988 and 1994, a representative sample of the noninstitutionalized civilian U.S. population, selected using a multistage stratified sampling design, participated in the NHANES III (Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey). Survey participants were interviewed and invited for a clinical examination (12,13, …
