Clinically Relevant Cardiovascular Fitness and the Metabolic Syndrome in

individual features in overweight Latino youths. Methods: A total of 163 overweight Latino boys and girls (body mass index (BMI) percentile 97.0 3.1; age 11.2 1.7 yr) with a family history of Type 2 diabetes participated in this investigation. The metabolic syndrome was defined as having three or more of the following risk factors: abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, low HDL-cholesterol, high triglycerides, and impaired glucose tolerance. V ˙ O2max was determined by a progressive treadmill test to exhaustion, and body composition was assessed using dual energy x-ray absorptiometry. Results: V ˙ O2max was not correlated with any individual risk factor of the metabolic syndrome after adjusting for gender, age, and body composition in partial analysis. Furthermore, ANCOVA revealed that children with zero, one, two, or three or more risk factors did not differ in regards to fitness levels. Conclusion: V ˙ O2max is not independently associated with the metabolic syndrome or any individual feature in overweight youths of Latino ethnicity after controlling for differences in confounding variables. Key Words: OBESITY, CHILDREN, V ˙ O2MAX, INSULIN RESISTANCE SYNDROME, PHYSICAL FITNESS, TYPE 2 DIABETES The prevalence of overweight in youths has increaseddramatically in recent years, especially among chil-dren of ethnic minority groups (26). Recent data suggest that among Latino children, the prevalence of over-weight (body mass index (BMI) 95th percentile for age and gender) has approximately doubled in the past 10 yr, such that 23.4 % of Latino youths ages 12–19 yr are over