Identifying Biomarkers and Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Childhood Metabolic Syndrome

Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is highly prevalent all over the world. MetS is largely under-diagnosed in children and adolescents. Obesity and hypertension are two important requirements for criteria of MetS. With early detection and early intervention of MetS in children and adolescents will enable better care to reduce the heavy burden of health care all over the world. Investigators intend to recruit 150 children and adolescents age 6 to 18 yr with overweight/obesity or prehypertension/hypertension and 50 normal age-matched controls to reach the following research goals: 1\) To identify biomarkers as risk factors; 2) To characterize that impact of vascular assessment in preMetS children; and 3) To examine the relationship among biomarkers, vascular assessment parameters, and metabolic phenotypes.