Interrelationship between exposure to PCDD/Fs and hypertension in metabolic syndrome in Taiwanese living near a highly contaminated area

Metabolic syndrome (MetS) consists of a constellation of metabolic abnormalities that confer increased risk of cardiovascular disease. There is a positive correlation between exposure to persistent organic pollutants and MetS. We examine the association between PCDD/Fs and MetS components in 1490 non-diabetic persons living near a highly dioxin-contaminated area. We used factor analysis, with a set of core variables considered central features of MetS and PCDD/Fs, to group similar risk factors. Serum PCDD/Fs were positively and significantly correlated with the number of MetS components. Four risk factors—lipidemia, blood pressure, body size, and glycemia—accounted for 72.6% of the variance in the 10 core factors, and PCDD/Fs were linked to MetS through shared correlations with high blood pressure. After adjusting for confounding factors, we found that diastolic blood pressure (β = 0.018; p = 0.006), glucose (β = 0.013; p = 0.046), and waist circumference (β = 0.721; p = 0.042) significantly increased with increasing serum PCDD/F levels. We found significant trends for associations between metabolic syndrome and serum low-chlorinated PCDD/Fs. The highest quintiles of 2,3,4,7,8-PeCDF, 1,2,3,6,7,8-HxCDF and 2,3,7,8-TCDD had the top three adjusted ORs (95% CI) of 3.5 (1.9–6.3), 2.9 (1.7–4.9) and 2.8 (1.6–4.9), respectively. We also found a slight monotonic relationship between serum PCDD/Fs and the prevalence of MetS, especially when the serum dioxin level was higher than 25.4 pg WHO98-TEQDF g−1 lipid (the fourth Quintile). We hypothesize that high-dose exposure to PCDD/Fs is a blood pressure-related factor that raises MetS risk.