Relative Hand Grip and Back Muscle Strength, but Not Mean Muscle Strength, as Risk Factors for Incident Metabolic Syndrome and Its Metabolic Components: 16 Years of Follow-Up in a Population-Based Cohort Study

Muscle strength is associated with health outcomes and can be considered an important disease predictor. There are several studies examining the relationship between hand grip strength (HGS) and metabolic syndrome (MetS). However, no results have been reported for long term longitudinal studies. In this study, we investigated the relationship between mean HGS, back muscle strength (BMS), relative HGS and BMS, and MetS. A total of 2538 non-MetS subjects aged 40–69 years (1215 women and 1323 men) in the Korean Genome and Epidemiology Study (KoGES) Ansan cohort were followed for 16 years. The relationships between incident MetS (iMetS) and muscle strength were estimated using Cox proportional hazard regression models after adjusting for the confounding factors. Increases in standard deviation (SD) and the lower quartile groups for relative HGS and BMS were significantly associated with iMetS in men and women. Moreover, increases in SD and high quintile groups (decreased HGS group) for the delta change in the mean and relative HGS were significantly associated with iMetS in men only. In addition, SD increases for the relative HGS and BMS were significantly associated with iMetS components in men and women. The present study suggests that lower relative HGS and BMS are associated with high risk for the future development of MetS