Ten years of aggregated data from the National Health Insurance Service screening yearbook were used to track the five metabolic syndrome components by age and sex. Abdominal obesity rose from 21.0% to 25.5%, hyperglycaemia from 34.7% to 40.1% and hypertension from 42.3% to 45.1%. Apparent falls in hypertriglyceridaemia and low HDL cholesterol coincided with a marked discontinuity in the series between 2018 and 2019, and men had higher prevalence of four of the five components.
Why it is interesting: A whole-population screening series on cardiometabolic risk in a country with among the world's lowest mortality, and a plain example of a measurement break passing for improvement.