Influence Of Metabolic Syndrome On Cataract Risk: A Meta-Analysis Of Observational Studies

The purpose of this article was to conduct the association between metabolic syndrome (MetS) and the risk of cataract. PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and Cochrane Library were searched for observational studies published before March 2015. Two authors independently extracted information from all included studies. STATA (version 12.0) software was used for data analysis. Fixed-effects or random-effects methods were used for the risk estimates. Publication bias was assessed qualitatively. Heterogeneity was examined using the I-2 statistic. Six independent studies were chosen for analysis, with a total of 54398 participants. This meta-analysis confirmed that MetS was associated with increased prevalence of cataract among cohort/case-control studies (RR 1.58, 95% CI: 1.4-1.77) and cross-sectional studies (OR 1.23; 95% CI, 1.05-1.44). In the subgroup meta-analysis by cataract types, MetS was found to be associated with an increased incidence of cataract extraction (OR 1.75; 95% CI, 1.49-2.06). However, no significant association was observed between Mets and all three cataract subtypes. MetS was significantly associated with cataract only in women (OR 1.29; 95% CI, 1.02-1.63). All individual components of MetS, including obesity, high glucose levels, high blood pressure (HBP), high triglycerides, and low high-density lipoprotein (HDL), were also found to correlate with an increased estimated risk of cataract. The ORs with 95% CI were 1.30 (1.09-1.55), 1.37 (1.1-1.71), 1.39 (1.08-1.79), 1.10 (1.0-1.20), 1.17 (1.04-1.32), respectively. In addition, cataract prevalence tended to increase with the number of MetS components. Overall, our results suggested that MetS was associated with a high risk of cataract.