Patients with the metabolic syndrome are at increased cardiovascular risk and display an augmented wall stiffness of the large-sized and medium-sized arteries, coupled with an endothelial dysfunction. Whether this is the case also for the small resistance arteries is unknown, however. It is also unknown whether and to what extent the hypothesized microvascular alterations are greater for magnitude than the ones characterizing obesity, that is the most common component of the metabolic syndrome.