Central and Peripheral Body Fat Distribution on Insulin Resistance of Young Obese Women

Abstract

Studies have shown that excess of fat in central region is the main substrate for pathophysiological alterations that leads obesity‐associated insulin resistance. Lately, in the medical practice the use of the waist circumference (WC) instead waist‐to‐hip ratio (WHR) is more usual. We hypothesized that WHR is a better tool to infer insulin resistance in young obese women. The aim of this study was to evaluate the insulin‐sensitive/insulin‐resistant in young obese women within central and peripheral body fat distribution. We studied 61 young obese women (BMI 30 to 40 kg/m2) with WC ≥ 88 cm and without comorbidities. They were divided into: with central fat distribution (CF), defined as waist‐to‐hip ratio (WHR) ≥ 0.85 cm (n=30, 33±7 y), and with peripheral fat distribution (PF) with WHR < 0.85 cm (n=31, 33±6 y). All volunteers were submitted to anthropometric, glycemic and insulin measurements and indexes: fasting, HOMA‐IR, QUICKI and area under the curve (AUC) during the Oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT) to assess the insulin sensitivity. Despite the fat distribution, CF and PF shown similar anthropometric measures (weight= 86.8±8.5 vs.87.6±8.3 kg, WC= 109±6 vs.106±8 cm, BMI= 33.2±2.7 vs. 33.7±2.4 kg/m2; respectively, p>0.05). Also, both obese groups, CF and PF, showed normal fasting glucose (84±10 vs. 82±10 mg/dL, p=0.420), based in the IDF criteria (<100mg/dL). However, the group CF compared with PF presented elevated fasting insulin (17.8±8.2 vs. 12.6±6.8 uUI/mL, p=0.008), HOMA‐IR (3.7±1.9 vs. 2.6±1.6 uUI/mL, p=0.011), reduced QUICKI (0.322±0.025 vs. 0.340±0.025, p=0.007). Furthermore, the group CF compared with PF had lower insulin sensitivity as AUCglucose/AUCinsulin ratio from OGTT (1.42±0.67 vs. 2.12±0.86, p=0.001). In conclusion, our data demonstrated that in young obese women with similar WC and fasting glucose, the central body fat distribution increase insulin‐resistant, emphasizing the importance in used the waist‐to‐hip ratio as important tool for identify the additional risk factor in obesity young women.Support or Funding Information#Universidade Nove de Julho (UNINOVE), SP ‐ Brazil.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.