Background
The present study aims to examine the association of the metabolic syndrome (MS) as
well as of the triglyceride-glucose index (TyG-Index), a novel marker of insulin resistance, with subclinical atherosclerosis in a cohort
of postmenopausal women, stratified according to their body mass index.
Methods
A total of 473 informed-consenting, non-diabetic postmenopausal women, without overt
cardiovascular disease, were included in this study. We aimed to compare the association
between structural and functional indices of subclinical atherosclerosis (i.e. carotid
artery intima-media thickness (IMT), flow-mediated dilation of the brachial artery,
pulse wave velocity (PWV)) with the TyG-index or MS, separately for lean and overweight/obese
women.
Results
The TyG-Index correlated significantly with carotid IMT (r = 0.155, p = 0.012) and PWV (r = 0.157, p = 0.013) only in the group of lean women. Multivariate analysis showed that subclinical
atherosclerosis was predicted by MS, in the overweight/obese group (OR = 2.517, 95% CI: 1.078–5.878, p = 0.033), and by the TyG-Index the lean group (OR = 3.119, 95% CI: 1.187–8.194, p < 0.001). Using a TyG-Index cut-off value of 8.0 in the lean subpopulation, women above
the cut-off had 44.1% prevalence of subclinical atherosclerosis compared to 29.4%
in women below the cut-off (p = 0.043).
Conclusions
The TyG-Index is associated with carotid atherosclerosis and arterial stiffness mainly
in lean postmenopausal women, while the MS serves as a better predictor of subclinical
atherosclerosis in overweight/obese women. The TyG-Index may prove a useful marker
for identifying high-risk women in the normal-weight postmenopausal population.
Abbreviations:
MS (metabolic syndrome), TyG-index (triglyceride–glucose index), CVD (cardiovascular disease), BMI (body mass index), WHR (waist-to-hip ratio), SBP (systolic blood pressure), DBP (diastolic blood pressure), HDL-cholesterol (high density lipoprotein cholesterol), LDL-cholesterol (low density lipoprotein cholesterol), CCA (common carotid artery), CB (carotid bulb), ICA (internal carotid artery), IMT (intima-media thickness), FMD (flow mediated dilation), PWV (pulse wave velocity), HOMA-IR (homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance)Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: June 16, 2017
Accepted:
May 18,
2017
Received in revised form:
May 2,
2017
Received:
October 11,
2016
Identification
Copyright
© 2017 Australian and New Zealand Society of Cardiac and Thoracic Surgeons (ANZSCTS) and the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand (CSANZ). Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
