Background:

Childhood obesity is a global health problem, as it is a risk factor for developing diseases such as metabolic syndrome and diabetes. At present, identifying these already established diseases is relatively easy for health professionals with the support of laboratory studies. The global trend in health involves acting before the disease is established.

Objectives:

The objective of this study is to identify whether total amylase activity is useful to predict which patients will develop metabolic syndrome or diabetes.

Material and methods:

Using a database with 101 Mexican patients, considering the value of the homeostasis model assessment insulin resistance as a diagnostic variable in three groups < 2 normal, between 2 and 5 with metabolic risk and > 5 as diabetes, as well as the value of the amylase enzymatic activity. Random forest (RF) was used as a machine learning method.

Results:

The RF model obtained the following results: area under the curve 0.7075, specificity 0.7619, sensitivity 0.7142, and accuracy 0.7500.

Conclusions:

It is concluded that with these variables and RF, it is feasible to have a prediction model that contributes to identifying this type of patients in the prepathogenic period.