Over the years, as the research on metabolic syndrome has accumulated, it has generated an ever-growing list of metabolic and hormonal abnormalities that accompany insulin resistance and are thus found in the obese, and which precede both heart disease and diabetes. These include large numbers of LDL particles in the circulation (not the cholesterol itself, but the particles that carry the cholesterol) and elevated blood levels of uric acid, a precursor of gout. They also include a state of chronic inflammation, marked by a high concentration in the blood of a protein known as C-reactive
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