Association between "urological age" with metabolic syndrome in non-pregnant adult women: potential mediating role of depression

BACKGROUND: Metabolic syndrome(MetS) represents a growing threat to the standard of living and lifespan of human beings. Urological age (UA) and urological age acceleration (UAA), recently proposed indicators for assessing biological age from the urological point of view, demonstrate an unclear correlation with MetS. METHODS: The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) was the basis of the data for the study. The data set included UA and UAA scores from 8,354 nonpregnant female aged 20 and above with full data, as well as PHQ-9 scores, which were used to assess depressive symptoms. The current research employed a logistic regression design to evaluate the link between UA/UAA and MetS. The predictive ability of UA and UAA for MetS risk was evaluated using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. To examine the mediating role of depression in the association of UA/UAA with MetS, mediation analysis was performed. RESULTS: Following comprehensive adjustment for latent variables, UA and UAA demonstrated a statistically significant association with MetS. In the ROC analysis, UA demonstrated an AUC of 0.728 (95 % CI: 0.716-0.740) with 77.56 % sensitivity and 58.33 % specificity, while UAA showed an AUC of 0.640 (95 % CI: 0.626-0.654) with 48.92 % sensitivity and 73.60 % specificity. Depression mediated the association of UA/UAA with the likelihood of MetS(UA:Proportion of mediation: 0.0405, 95 %CI: (0.0208, 0.01); P-value < 0.001,UAA:Proportion of mediation: 0.0419, 95 %CI: (0.0214, 0.06,); P-value < 0.001). CONCLUSION: UA and UAA may increase the risk of MetS in non-pregnant adult women. Furthermore, Depressive symptoms partially mediated the relationship between UA/UAA and MetS.