An Author Responds to Meigs Tracy An Author Responds to Meigs ’ Invited Commentary

lent review of factor analysis, specifically as it pertains to this metabolic syndrome. I shall briefly address several of his comments. First, the final position of plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) in our study (2) was of particular inter-est, given the known associations of PAI-1 with obesity (3), insulin (4), and inflammation (5). The respective loadings for these three factors were 0.44, 0.34, and –0.03, clearly indicating the stronger relations. Given the increasing inter-est in PAI-1 as an etiologic agent in disease progression (6), these findings have important health implications. Second, I agree with Dr. Meigs that it was surprising to see C-reactive protein emerge as “independent ” of body mass, especially given that this cohort was used in one of the first analyses to describe the association of C-reactive pro