Status of serum adiponectin related to insulin resistance in prediabetics

Obejctive: to find the status of serum adiponectin in individuals progressing towards type 2 diabetes mellitus and compare it with normal glucose tolerant subjects to determine the stage where alteration of adiponectin occurred. methods: the cross-sectional study was carried out at the department of biochemistry, jinnah postgraduate medical centre, karachi, during january to august 2008. subjects were invited through various diabetes screening camps. a total of 608 subjects >30 years of age without prior history of diabetes were screened through fasting plasma glucose and 2-hour oral glucose tolerance test. forty randomly selected pre-diabetic subjects and 40 age and gender-matched subjects were included in the study. anthropometric measurements were done. serum insulin and adiponectin were estimated by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (homa-ir) was used to calculate insulin resistance mathematically. result: mean fasting and two-hour plasma glucose, body mass index, waist, hip circumference and blood pressure were significantly raised in pre-diabetics compared to those with normal glucose tolerance. adiponectin was significantly decreased, while insulin and homa-ir were raised significantly in the pre-diabetics. adiponectin showed significant negative correlation with body mass index (r=-0.31, p=0.005), fasting plasma glucose (r=-0.24, p= 0.032), 2-hour plasma glucose (r=-0.42, p<0.0001)), insulin (r= -0.43, p<0.0001) and homa-ir (r= -0.43, p<0.0001) and remained significant after adjustment of body mass index, gender and insulin level in pre-diabetics. conclusion: adiponectin estimation may help in earlier identification of impending diabetes. however, casual link between adiponectin and pre-diabetes remained unexplored due to the study design and small sample size that warrants longitudinal large-scale studies.