Objective. A higher prevalence of metabolic syndrome (MetS) has been described in various rheumatic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus, but no direct studies have investigated the prevalence of MetS in systemic sclerosis (SSc) patients compared with the general population. We compared the frequency of MetS and insulin resistance, as measured by Homeostatic assessment model-insulin resistance (HOMA- IR) between female SSc patients and healthy subjects.
Methods. In a cross-sectional setting, 35 female SSc patients and 84 age and sex-matched healthy subjects were consecutively recruited at a single center of a tertiary hospital between 2009 and 2010. MetS was defined according to the National Cholesterol Education Program's Adult Treatment Panel (NCEP-ATP III) 2004 criteria, using the Asian criteria for central obesity.
Results. The frequency of MetS was not significantly higher in SSc patients (20.0%) than in healthy subjects (14.3%, p=0.425), but SSc patients had an increased insulin resistance measured by HOMA-IR (p=0.001). Significantly more patients with SSc had increased triglyceride concentrations (p=0.004) and fewer SSc patients tended to meet the waist circumference criterion (p=0.051) according to the individual MetS features. Additionally, there were no significant differences in age, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, body mass index, HOMA-IR, disease duration, cumulative glucocorticoids dose, modified Rodnan skin score or the proportion of limited SSc cases according to the absence or presence of MetS in SSc patients.
Conclusion. Unlike other rheumatic diseases, our preliminary report did not show a significant difference in the prevalence of MetS between female SSc patients and healthy subjects.

Keywords: Systemic sclerosis, Metabolic syndrome, Insulin resistance