Syndrome X

When patients complain of excessive thirst, faintness, and chest pains, doctors often inform them that they have Syndrome X, a mysterious disease whose risk factors include the same ones for diabetes and heart disease: hypertension, stress, high cholesterol, poor diet, and little or no exercise. However, Syndrome X works quite differently from diabetes. Insulin injections help diabetics receive the insulin that their pancreases fail to manufacture; for Syndrome X sufferers, the pancreas produces so much insulin that blood pressure rises and the liver unleashes fat into the bloodstream, blocking arteries and creating health risks.

Syndrome X earned its name in 1988, when after twenty-three years of research, the Stanford University doctor who discovered it still couldn't definitively label it. Indeed, some scientists insist that Syndrome X should be described as a side effect of modern lifestyle habits rather than as a disease. Pharmaceutical companies, however, are striving to locate a gene, and thus find a single drug to combat the condition. Currently, Syndrome X patients must take several different drugs to relieve their symptoms (ones that reduce cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and prevent blood sugar from soaring). Since these medications cost hundreds of dollars, this method of treatment in itself draws criticism from already skeptical scientists.

The ideal Syndrome X treatment, most drug companies agree, would balance lipid and glucose levels simultaneously, eliminating the need for multiple medications. At any rate, it will be at least five more years until drugs marketed exclusively for Syndrome X are available. The search for a gene will continue, just as doctors will argue for and against admitting Syndrome X into our already crowded canon of modern maladies.