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Sugar intake has been widely consumed and has been associated with increased risk of weight gain, diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular diseases. However the effect towards metabolic syndrome has not yet been reported especially among multi-ethnic Malaysian older adults. A total of 1,058 subjects aged 60 years and above were recruited through multistage random sampling and were interviewed to obtain information on sociodemographic, health status, and sugar intake. Anthropometric, blood pressure and blood test were also measured. Results showed that most subjects had normal BMI (43.5%), however 47.1% had abdominal obesity particularly among women (57.7%). Nearly half of the subjects reported to have hypertension (55.2%) and high cholesterol (45.2%). Prevalence of metabolic syndrome was 25.2% especially among women (28.4%). There were no significant differences (p<0.05) between percentiles of sugar intake with anthropometric measurements. However, a higher percentile of sugar intake was found to be associated with increased risk of blood pressure at 75th (1.97), total cholesterol at 50th (1.56), 75th (1.97) and 100th (2.23) and LDL-cholesterol at 75th (1.68). As a conclusion, sugar consumption among older adults was not associated with obesity and metabolic syndrome but it affected their blood pressure and lipid profile.
Keywords: metabolic syndrome, older adults, sugar intake