Metabolic Syndrome and Complications
of Pregnancy

The concept of metabolic syndrome was articulated by Gerald Reaven in 1988 at
the Banting Lecture of the American Diabetes Association annual meeting. Reaven

proposed that insulin resistance led to hyperglycemia, hyperinsulinemia, hyperlip-
idemia, central obesity, and hypertension [1]. The term “syndrome X,” a physio-
logic construct , was introduced to emphasize the role of insulin resistance in the

clustering of the clinical manifestations. Ten years later, after the recognition that
this cluster increased the risk for cardiovascular disease, the World Health
Organization (WHO) proposed clinical criteria to identify such individuals, and the
term metabolic syndrome was coined [2, 3]. Fast forward a few years and a large

number of publications, scientifi c societies promoted harmonization of the diag-
nostic criteria for metabolic syndrome [4]. These include an elevated fasting glu-
cose, elevated triglycerides, low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C),

elevated waist circumference,