Correlations between surrogate measures of insulin resistance and cardiovascular risk factors in obese and overweight patients

Abstract

There are different equations to estimate insulin sensitivity by using OGTT with a reasonable approximation to whole body sensitivity obtained with the glucose clamp. Further work is needed to address their role in clinical practice as markers of the metabolic syndrome and predictors for cardiovascular disease. In the present study, we determined plasma glucose and insulin values during an OGTT test in 144 overweight and obese individuals. We assessed insulin resistance by the use of different equations and established their relationship with cardiovascular risk factors associated to the insulin resistance syndrome. Distributed the patients by quintiles of body mass index (BMI), the different surrogate measures clearly demonstrated that the more obese individuals were the most insulin resistant, a similar but not significant trend was observed related to the other cardiovascular risk factors. Efforts to use both fasting and post-load glucose and insulin concentrations to create indexes for routine use in clinical practice do not seem to be particularly useful in overweight or obese patients, as most of these patients will be insulin-resistant and insulin resistance is closely linked but not equal to the metabolic syndrome.