Is the Third Component of Metabolic Syndrome Really Predictive of Outcomes in Type 2 Diabetic Patients?

Abstract
An observational cohort study was performed on four consecutive series of type 2 diabetic patients resident in the city of Florence, Italy, with elevated blood pressure (sample A), hypertriglyceridemia (sample B), low HDL cholesterol (sample C), and elevated waist circumference (sample D), as defined by ATP-III criteria for metabolic syndrome (15), who were visited at the Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases Clinic of the Geriatric Unit of the University of Florence between 1 January 2000 and 31 December 2002. The four samples (A, B, C, and D), which were consecutively enrolled one after another (each during a period of 6 months) are described in Table 1.