RÉSUMÉ
Abdominal obesity is increasingly recognized as a major] risk factor for cardiovascular disease [CVD]. Compared with body mass index [BMI], waist circumference appear to be more strongly associated with metabolic risk factors.there are contradictor about the cut point of waist circumference in different ethnic group. Our aim therefore was to measure waist circumference and other criteria of the metabolic syndrome in Egyptian diabetic patients to determine Egyptian cut point for waist. 2651 diabetic patients with different duration of diabetes participated in this study. There is ethnic variation as regard waist circumference in diabetic Egyptian patients, mean WC [M = 102cm. F = 109cm]. It is clear that female waist is bigger than male and this is Egyptian variation- So cut point for metabolic syndrome must be changed due to ethnic variation. By using receiver-operating characteristic curves [ROC] the best point was [M = 94cm, F = 98cm] for waist cut point to determine metabolic syndrome and 30kg/m2 for body mass index. Correlation analysis proof that waist is better than BMI as a tool to detect diabetic complications like retinopathy and IHD. And regression analysis show that in diabetic female patient's glycaemic state is linked to large waist and in male, glycaemic state is linked to BMI