Influence of metabolic syndrome on hypertension‐related target organ damage

. Objectives. The aim of our study was to analyse, in a wide group of essential hypertensive patients without diabetes mellitus, the influence of metabolic syndrome (MS) (defined according to the criteria laid down in the Third Report of the National Cholesterol Education Program Expert Panel on Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Cholesterol in Adults) on markers of preclinical cardiac, renal and retinal damage. Design. Cross‐sectional study. Setting. Outpatient hypertension clinic. Subjects and methods. A total of 353 young and middle‐aged hypertensives, free from cardiovascular and renal diseases (and 37% of whom had MS), underwent echocardiographic examination, microalbuminuria determination and non‐mydriatic retinography. Results. When compared with subjects without MS, hypertensive patients with MS exhibited more elevated left ventricular (LV) mass (either normalized by body surface area or by height elevated by a power of 2.7), higher myocardial relative wall thickness, albumin excretion rate (AER) and a greater prevalence of LV hypertrophy (57.7% vs. 25.1%; P