Background: Childhood obesity is a serious global public health concern due to its prevalence in both industrialized and developing nations. A mathematical model for evaluating adult metabolic syndrome (MetS) was published by Soldatovic et al.
Objectives: To assess the siMS score as a metabolic syndrome screening tool in children and adolescents with simple obesity.
Methods: The goal of the current study was to compare the siMS score between those with and without metabolic syndrome in 50 obese children who were seen or admitted to the nutrition unit or outpatient nutrition clinic at Assiut University Children Hospital from January 1 through December 31, 2020.
Results: The prevalence of Mets among 50 studied cases with simple obesity was 48% with a male-to-female ratio of 1:1.4. The mean siMS score was significantly higher among Mets patients compared to patients without MetS (2.87 ± 0.29 versus 3.48 ± 0.52, P<0.001) in both studied groups respectively. Among MetS patients, a significant positive correlation was observed between the siMS score and triglyceride level (r= 0.799, p<0.001). The predictive ability of siMS for prediction of MetS by using the ROC curve analysis revealed that at a cut-off value of 3.0, the areas under the ROC curves were 87.0% with a sensitivity of 87.5% and a specificity of 73.1%.
Conclusions: siMS was a good predictor for the development of MetS among pediatric patients with simple obesity.