For women in midlife, risk factors for heart disease and diabetes tend to become more common and social factors may influence who is most vulnerable to developing them.

Researchers in Korea studied some 1200 healthy women between the ages of 45 and 55 for an average of four years.

They found that body fat around the waist, higher blood pressure, high blood sugar and abnormal cholesterol levels are all features of so-called metabolic syndrome. And this in turn, raises a person’s risk of developing cardiovascular disease and diabetes and even some cancers.

Overweight women in the study were more than four times as likely as healthy-weight women to develop metabolic syndrome and obese women were nearly 12 times as likely.

Low income women were more than twice as likely to develop metabolic syndrome.

Women who had smoked were 60 percent more likely than those who hadn’t to develop metabolic syndrome.

And women who were sedentary had a 55 percent higher risk than those who exercised regularly.

You can read more about the study in the journal Menopause.