Dr. Sankar Navaneethan of the Cleveland Clinic and colleagues searched the medical literature and combined data from 11 studies examining the relationship between metabolic syndrome and kidney disease involving 30,416 individuals.
A patient is diagnosed with the syndrome when he or she exhibits three or more of the following characteristics -- high blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat in the waist/abdomen, low "good cholesterol and higher levels of fatty acids, the researchers say.
The study, scheduled to be published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology, found those with metabolic abnormalities are at increased risk of developing kidney disease.
The study also finds:
-- People with metabolic syndrome have a 55 percent increased risk of developing kidney problems, especially lower kidney function, indicative of kidney disease.
-- Individual components of metabolic syndrome are linked with the development of kidney disease.
-- Kidney disease risk increases as the number of metabolic syndrome components increases.
"Primary care physicians may need to consider using metabolic syndrome as a marker to identify patients at higher risk of developing kidney disease," Navaneethan says in a statement.