EPO and metabolic syndrome: Lippi et al. demonstrated that an elevated RDW involved both impaired erythropoiesis and abnormal erythrocyte metabolism and survival that mirrored a variety of abnormalities, such as shortening of telomeres length, oxidative stress, inflammation, erythrocyte fragmentation, poor nutritional status, hypertension, dyslipidemia and abnormality of erythropoietin function [3].