Metabolic Syndrome among Young Business Process Outsourcing Industry Employees

Metabolic Syndrome (MetS) is a complicated disorder that increases a person's risk to cardiovascular disease and diabetes mellitus and therefore, needs to be diagnosed early. Young adults in business process outsourcing industry (BPO) may be more susceptible to the syndrome owing to the sedentary nature of their work and other lifestyle factors. This study aimed at assessing the prevalence of MetS among young business process outsourcing industry employees (21-30 years). In this cross-sectional study conducted in the National Capital Region of India, MetS was diagnosed using the Adult Treatment Pattern III (NCEP ATPIII, 2001) and International Diabetes Federation (IDF, 2005) (ethnicity specific) criteria among 415 business process outsourcing employees (274 males; 141 females) working at the calling level. Prevalence of MetS was 11.8% according to ATPIII criteria (14.6% males; 6.4% females) and 18.3% according to IDF criteria (22.3% males; 10.6% females) and was significantly higher in males compared to females (ATPIII p = 0.014; 95% CI 0.02, 0.14; IDF:p = 0.004; 95% CI 0.05, 0.19). As per the ATPIII criteria, highest proportion of the employees had low levels of HDL cholesterol (48.2%) whereas as per the IDF criteria, they had high waist circumference (58.6%). MetS was significantly associated with being single (ATPIII p=0.003; IDF p=0.012), having monthly income more than 20,000 INR (ATPIII p=0.009), having waist to height ratio ≥ 0.5 (ATPIII p=0.002; IDF p=0.000) and BMI ≥ 23kg/m² (ATPIII p=0.000; IDF p=0.000). With nearly 1/5th of the BPO employees having MetS at a young age (21-30 years), there is an urgent need to initiate appropriate workplace screening and intervention strategies to prevent and reverse the syndrome among them.