In most studies the mean age of participants in the study group was over 40 years of age, and only a few studies referred to patients with first episode schizophrenia [Attux et al. 2007; Saddichha et al. 2007; De Hert et al. 2008b; Saddichha et al. 2008; Curtis et al. 2011]. The predominant diagnosis of patients studied was schizophrenia, however a great number of studies also included patients with Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical schizoaffective disorder and other psychotic disorders. In almost all studies, patients
were medicated with first- and second-generation antipsychotic drugs (FGAs, SGAs) and only one cross-sectional and two case-control studies referred to drug-naïve patients [Saddichha et al. 2007, 2008; Padmavati et al. 2010]. Most studies used the NCEP-ATP III
definition while some studies also calculated MetS rates by using the IDF definition. Overall prevalence rates Prevalence rates varied largely across studies. This possibly reflected the epidemiological versatility of the groups Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of patients studied, and factors such as age, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical sex, ethnicity, medication status, smoking, duration of illness and country of origin affected the final outcome. The lowest prevalence rate reported was 3.9%, originating from an Neratinib purchase Indian population of 51 unmedicated, drug-naïve young outpatients (mean age 26.9) with chronic schizophrenia, and was based on the IDF definition of MetS [Padmavati et al. 2010]. The highest prevalence rate reported, 68%, derived Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical from a study of 221 psychotic inpatients and outpatients (mean age 37.9) from a New Zealand rehabilitation setting, who were treated with a combination of FGAs and SGAs (authors used the IDF criteria) [Tirupati and Chua, 2007]. Those two studies clearly showed how MetS rates vary between two completely different populations Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of patients with psychosis, who can be placed at the extremes of a spectrum in terms of their epidemiological features and medication status. When different criteria were used to calculate MetS in the same population, outcome rates also varied, with IDF criteria usually generating the
highest rates and NCEP-ATP III modified criteria the lowest [McEvoy et al. 2005; Correll et al. 2006, 2008; De Hert et al. 2006a and 2006b, 2007; Meyer et al. 2006; Bobes et al. 2007; Cerit et al. 2008; Rejas et al. 2008; Saddichha et al. 2008; Rezaei et al. 2009; Sugawara et al. 2010; Yazici et al. 2011]. Those studies that GPX6 also included a control group revealed that the rates of MetS in patients with schizophrenia were at least twice as high compared with the general population [Cohn et al. 2004; McEvoy et al. 2005; Saari et al. 2005; Lamberti et al. 2006; Mackin et al. 2007; Sugawara et al. 2010]. This effect was usually more prominent in younger age groups and tended to be attenuated or even reversed in older age groups [McEvoy et al. 2005; Lamberti et al. 2006; Sugawara et al. 2010; Yazici et al. 2011].