Surrogate markers for insulin resistance help predict hypertension, hyperuricaemia

Insulin resistance surrogate measures may help signal hypertension (HTN) and hyperuricaemia (HUA), a new study has found. In particular, the combination of the production of glucose and triglycerides (TyG index) with body mass index (BMI), as well as METS-IR, a novel noninsulin-based fasting score, seem to have good discriminative abilities for HTN and HUA.

The researchers conducted an analysis of data from 4,352 participants, of whom 79.55 percent (n=3,462) had HTN and 15.63 percent (n=680) had HUA. Aside from TyG-BMI index and METS-IR, the other insulin resistance surrogates assessed were TyG index alone and the ratio of triglycerides to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (TG/HDL-C).

The novel METS-IR was calculated taking into consideration fasting plasma glucose, triglyceride levels, BMI, and HDL-C.

Fully adjusted binary logistic regression, comparing participants in the top vs bottom quartiles of each surrogate measure, showed that the TyG-BMI index was significantly associated with HTN (odds ratio [OR], 3.56, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 2.70—4.70; p<0.01), as well as with the composite between HTN and HUA (OR, 8.54, 95 percent CI, 5.58–13.09; p<0.01).

METS-IR, too, shared a significant correlation with both HTN (OR, 3.22, 95 percent CI, 2.45–4.24; p<0.01) and HTN-HUA (OR, 9.30, 95 percent CI, 6.00–14.43; p<0.01). The same was true for TyG index and TG/HDL-C.

Of the four surrogate markers, TyG-BMI index and METS-IR also had significant discriminative ability for HTN-HUA, with area under the curve values of 0.72 (95 percent CI, 0.70–0.74) and 0.73 (95 percent CI, 0.70–0.75) and cut-off values of 212.12 and 37.27, respectively.