ESPE Abstracts

Introduction: This article aims to compare the influence of maternal and paternal metabolic syndrome on their children and investigate whether the impacts vary based on the child’s gender.

Method: This is a retrospective, cross-sectional study involving 5,245 Korean children and adolescents aged between 10 and 19 years. Clinical information of the participants and their parents was collected from the Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES) from 2007 to 2020. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and multiple regression analysis were used to evaluate the association between the cardiometabolic risk factors of the participants and the presence of paternal or maternal metabolic syndrome (MetS).

Results: Most clinical parameters tended to be associated with both paternal and maternal MetS in boys. On the other hand, several factors, including total cholesterol (T-C) level, triglycerides (TG), and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) level, showed relatively low association in girls. The results varied after adjusting for confounders: blood pressure significantly increased in boys with the maternal MetS and girls with the paternal MetS. Glucose levels showed a significant change only in boys with the presence of paternal MetS. LDL-C was significantly increased in both genders with the maternal MetS, while it was only elevated in boys with paternal MetS. TG and HDL-C levels were significantly increased in both genders with both parental MetS, although the change appeared to be more pronounced in boys than in girls. In boys, the adjusted odds ratios (ORs) for MetS and most of its components were significantly higher in the presence of both parental MetS. In contrast, the OR increase of MetS was statistically weak in girls.

Conclusion: This study revealed that the gender of the affected parent is also a contributing factor to MetS in patients with a family history of the disease. The impact appears stronger when the father is affected, and it is greater in male children than in female children.