Metabolic syndrome is associated with an increased risk of falls in the elderly

Abstract

Numerous studies have investigated the causes of falls in the elderly. However, there is little information about metabolic syndrome (MS) as a risk factor for falls in older adults. No evaluations have given a qualitative overview of studies examining the relationship between MS and falls in the elderly. We did a literature search in electronic databases to look for studies that assessed a link between MS and falls among people over the age of 55 years. We found three studies of high quality. These included 2774 people with an average age of 72 years. Even after controlling for other risk factors, two studies found that MS was significantly associated with an older adult’s 1.3–2.5-fold increased risk of falling. We found that MS and its independent components were strongly linked with falls among the elderly, even after correcting for numerous variables.