RESUMO
The current case–control study sought the association of BDNF rs6265 and MC4R rs17782313 with metabolic syndrome(MetS), MetS components and other related metabolic parameters in a sample of Pakistani subjects. Fasting high-densitylipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and homeostatic model assessment of insulin sensitivity showed a significantly lowermean whereas body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP),fasting blood glucose, insulin, total cholesterol (TC), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, very-low-density lipoproteincholesterol, triglycerides (TG), cholesterol to HDL-C ratio, TG to HDL-C ratio, homeostatic model assessment of insulinresistance, visceral adiposity index, lipid accumulation product and the product of TG and glucose showed a significantlyhigher mean in the presence of MetS. Reduced HDL-C appeared as the most frequent and hypertriglyceridemia as the leastfrequent component of MetS whereas clustering of reduced HDL-C ? abdominal obesity (AO) ? hyperglycemia appearedas the most prevalent combination of MetS components. Moreover, BDNF rs6265 showed BMI and gender independentassociation with increased risk of MetS in Pakistani individuals whereas MC4R rs17782313 showed BMI and genderdependent association with increased risk of MetS in Pakistani females. In addition, BDNF rs6265 and MC4R rs17782313showed gender-dependent associations with decreased risk of having low HDL-C in males and increased risk of havingabdominal obesity in females, respectively. However, no association was observed for metabolic variables other thancomponents of MetS across genotypes of both BDNF rs6265 and MC4R rs17782313.