The purpose of this study was to evaluate the predictors of metabolic syndrome in shipyard workers in the Southwestern part of South Korea and determine its prevalence.

The study subjects were composed of 1,198 medical check-up examinees, age 37 to 58 years who were examined in a general hospital from July, 2007 to August, 2008. Information about age, smoking, drinking and exercise was based on data from self-administered questionnaires. We collected job factors, education level and marital status from company personnel data and the indices of metabolic syndrome from the medical check-up.

The prevalence of metabolic syndrome among the 1,198 shipyard workers was 15.0%. The prevalence of the components of metabolic syndrome was as follows: 26.9% for central obesity, 31.7% for hypertension, 32.2% for hypertriglyceridemia, 19.2% for low HDL-cholesterolemia and 5.2% for hyperglycemia. Adjusted odds ratio for metabolic syndrome was significantly decreased in productive workers (OR: 0.500, 95% CI: 0.327–0.764). Furthermore, factors such as age, smoking, drinking, exercise, work duration and job type were significantly associated with metabolic syndrome.

Our findings suggest that even though shipyard workers work for the same employer, the prevalence of metabolic syndrome varies to job type, shift work and work duration. Therefore, general metabolic syndrome management programs for shipyard workers should be designed and tailor-made for specified job characteristics to prevent cardiovascular disease more effectively. Also, thorough control and management of the tailor made metabolic syndrome management programs is needed in the early stages of metabolic syndrome for good health outcomes.