*3.2. Quality Assessment*

The quality of the 58 included studies was examined according to the NOS [50]. Five studies were characterized as unsatisfactory due to their ratings (2–4 stars) [43,67,75,80,107], whereas for 17 studies the quality was only satisfactory (5–6 stars) [39,49,61,63,71,86,92–94,96, 97,100,104,105]. The majority of the included studies (*n* = 28) [40,44,45,47,58–60,62,65,68– 70,72,74,76,77,79,81–85,87,88,95,101,103,106] were good quality studies (7–8 stars), and eight studies were at the top of quality studies scoring 9 stars [46,64,66,73,91,98,99,102]. More information regarding the assessment of quality according to the NOS can be found in Supplementary File S3.

## *3.3. Publication Bias*

Funnel plots of studies included in our meta-analysis regarding each parameter of MetS can be found in Supplementary Figure S1a–e. Both the symmetry of funnel plots and Egger's test results confirm the absence of publication bias in all parameters of MetS except TG. Eggers's test results were *p* = 0.8325 referred to WC, *p* = 0.2177 referred to HDL, *p* = 0.04598 referred to TG, *p* = 0.8533 referred to SBP, and *p* = 0.4677 referred to FGL.
