M.S. Applied Data Science - Capstone Chronicles 2025

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the analysis next explored how medication use interacted with lifestyle effort. Figure 5 presents a heatmap of metabolic syndrome prevalence across combinations of medication class and lifestyle category. A clear pattern emerges: individuals taking both MetSyn-related and other medications exhibit the highest prevalence rates, regardless of lifestyle effort. For example,

prevalence reached 92% among those with a “Good” lifestyle score in this category, and remained high at 80% and 67% for the “Moderate” and “Poor” groups, respectively. Those taking only MetSyn-related medications also showed consistently elevated prevalence (73–77%), with minimal variation across lifestyle categories.

Figure 5 Heatmap showing the proportion of metabolic syndrome cases across combinations of medication class and lifestyle level, highlighting elevated risk even among individuals with good lifestyle habits when multiple medications are involved.

In contrast, individuals not taking any medications generally had a lower prevalence of metabolic syndrome across all lifestyle levels, reinforcing the expectation that absence of pharmacological treatment is often associated with better metabolic health. Interestingly, those

taking only non-MetSyn medications tended to have intermediate prevalence rates—lower than the MetSyn-related groups, but higher than the no-medication group—suggesting that medication use in general may reflect underlying health burdens that contribute to elevated risk.

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