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  • Insulin resistance, beta-cell function, adipokine profiles and cardiometabolic risk factors among Chinese youth with isolated impaired fasting glucose versus impaired glucose tolerance: the BCAMS study

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Cardiovascular and Metabolic Risk
Insulin resistance, beta-cell function, adipokine profiles and cardiometabolic risk factors among Chinese youth with isolated impaired fasting glucose versus impaired glucose tolerance: the BCAMS study
  1. Yu Li1,
  2. Dan Feng2,
  3. Issy C Esangbedo3,
  4. Yanglu Zhao4,
  5. Lanwen Han2,
  6. Yingna Zhu2,
  7. Junling Fu1,
  8. Ge Li1,
  9. Dongmei Wang1,
  10. Yonghui Wang2,
  11. Ming Li1,
  12. Shan Gao2,
  13. Steven M Willi5
  1. 1Department of Endocrinology, NHC Key Laboratory of Endocrinolog, Peking Union Medical College Hospital,Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China
  2. 2Department of Endocrinology, Beijing Chaoyang Hospital,Capital Medical University, Beijing, China
  3. 3Health Weight Program, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Perelman School of Medicine at University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
  4. 4Epidemiology Department, Fielding School of Public Health, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA
  5. 5Division of Endocrinology, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
  1. Correspondence to Professor Ming Li; liming{at}pumch.cn; Professor Shan Gao; gaoshanmw{at}163.com

Abstract

Objective Impaired fasting glucose (IFG) and impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) may convey disparate risks of metabolic consequences. Fasting plasma glucose (FPG), while an expedient screening procedure, may not adequately assess metabolic risk, particularly among youths. In order to inform a strategy for screening Chinese youth for pre-diabetes, we examined the relative value of IFG versus IGT to define metabolic risk by assessing their association with insulin resistance, beta-cell dysfunction, adverse adipokine profiles and other cardiometabolic risk factors.

Research design and methods We recruited 542 subjects (age 14–28 years) from the Beijing Child and Adolescent Metabolic Syndrome study for an in-depth assessment of cardiometabolic risk factors, including a 2-hour oral glucose tolerance test, liver ultrasound and serum levels of four adipokines.

Results FPG failed to identify nearly all (32/33) youths with IGT, whereas 2-hour plasma glucose (2 h PG) missed 80.8% (21/26) of subjects with IFG. Impaired beta-cell function was evident from decreased oral disposition indices in those with isolated impaired fasting glucose (iIFG) or isolated impaired glucose tolerance (iIGT) versus normal glucose tolerance (NGT) (all p<0.001), whereas reduced insulin sensitivity (Matsuda) index was most pronounced in the iIGT group (p<0.01). Moreover, alterations in adipokine levels (fibroblast growth factor 21, adiponectin and leptin/adiponectin ratio) were associated with iIGT (p<0.05) but not iIFG. Youths with iIGT had a 2-fold to 32-fold increased incidence of hypertriglyceridemia, hypertension and metabolic syndrome (MetS) compared with those with NGT. In addition, subgroup analyses of participants with normal FPG revealed that the odds of having IGT increased 3-fold to 18-fold among those with elevated TGs, hypertension, moderate-to-severe non-alcoholic fatty liver disease or MetS.

Conclusions Chinese youth with iIGT exhibit a higher cardiometabolic risk profile than those with iIFG. Thus, 2 h PG is preferred over FPG to identify the pre-diabetes phenotype at greatest risk of subsequent development of cardiovascular disease.

Trial registration number NCT03421444.

  • impaired fasting glucose
  • impaired glucose tolerance
  • adipokines
  • metabolic syndrome
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjdrc-2019-000724

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    Footnotes

    • YL and DF are joint first authors.

    • ML and SG contributed equally.

    • Contributors YL and DF contributed to the data analysis and drafted the manuscript; ICE and YZ contributed to the data analysis and revised the manuscript; LH, YZ, JF, GL, DW and YW contributed to the data collection; SMW contributed to the concept and design of the study, interpretation of the data and revision of the manuscript; ML contributed to the concept, design of the study, analysis of the data and revision of the manuscript. SG was responsible for the concept, design and data collection in the Beijing Child and Adolescent Metabolic Syndrome follow-up study; contributed to the acquisition and interpretation of the data; and revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent for publication Not required.

    • Ethics approval The study protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee at the Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, and signed informed consent was obtained from all participants and/or their parents or guardians.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.

    • Data availability statement All data relevant to the study are included in the article or uploaded as supplementary information.