Prevalence of diabetes mellitus and metabolic syndrome in Slovakia.

Background: Slovakia is a country with high prevalence of diabetes mellitus (DM) and coronary heart disease (CHD), but the reason of west-east gradient prevalence in Europe is not clear.

Methods: We analyzed 1517 subjects responding to structure of Slovak adult population according to age, sex and regions. Self-reporting CHD risk factors, waist circumference, body mass index (BMI), blood pressure, levels of fasting and 2h glucose, triglycerides, and HDL cholesterol were examined. Impaired fasting glucose (IFG) and DM were diagnosed according to American Diabetes Association (ADA) criteria and the metabolic syndrome (MS) according to NCEP/ATP III and International Diabetes Federation (IDF) criteria.

Results: We confirmed 7.0% DM prevalence, including 5.3% of known DM, 1.2% of new DM according to the ADA criteria, and 0.5% of additional new DM cases after oral glucose test (oGTT) in subjects with IFG. Prevalence of MS according to NCEP/ATP III criteria were 20.1% (15.9% in males and 23.9% in females) and 38.1% according to IDF criteria (39.7% in males and 36.6% in females). Low HDL was the most common MS component in the Slovak population (56% total, 45% in male and 66% in female subjects).

Conclusions: DM prevalence in Slovakia is higher than in West European countries and equal to the Mediterranean countries. MS prevalence and its components are equal to European population with the exception of low HDL, which is one of the highest in Europe.