Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Resistin is a recently discovered adipocyte-secreted hormone that links obesity with insulin resistance and/or metabolic and cardiovascular risk. This study was designed to investigate whether serum resistin concentrations constitute a significant coronary risk factor, with a particular focus on diabetes and one of its microvascular complications; nephropathy.

Methodology: Serum resistin was measured in 86 overweight patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and 16 overweight healthy controls. Patients were divided into two groups according to presence or absence of diabetes: IHD with diabetes (n=46), and IHD without diabetes (n=40). In addition, patients with diabetes were subdivided into two groups: diabetics with microalbuminuria (n=26) and without (n=20).

Results: Non-diabetic IHD patients had a significantly higher level of serum resistin when compared to control participants (15.3±13 vs 6.3±2.7 ng/ml, P=0.008). IHD patients with diabetes had a significantly higher level of serum cholesterol, LDL and resistin compared to IHD patients without (204±43 vs 181±31 mg/dl, P=0.048), (129±36 vs 111±23 mg/dl, P=0.048) and (41±33 vs 15.3±13 ng/ml, P=0.002) respectively. Working on diabetic patients, the only significant difference between patients with microalbuminuria and those without is serum resistin concentration (55±37 vs 23±14 ng/ml, P=0.011). Pearson correlations including all subjects showed that serum resistin concentration had a significant positive correlation with both total serum cholesterol (r=270, P=0.05) and serum LDL (r=313, P=0.026).

Conclusion: This study showed that serum resistin concentration is associated independently with coronary atherosclerosis in overweight patients. Serum resistin is increased in patients with diabetes mellitus particularly those with microalbuminuria.