Searchable abstracts of presentations at key conferences in endocrinology
Endocrine Abstracts (2009) 20 P369

ECE2009 Poster Presentations Diabetes and Cardiovascular (103 abstracts)

Epicardial adipose tissue thickness and serum visfatin levels in patients with new diagnosed prediabetes and type 2 diabetes mellitus

Abdullah Taslipinar 1 , Mine Y Taslipinar 2 , Omer Azal 1 , Mustafa Sahin 1 , Levent Kebapcilar 1 , Levent Ozdemir 3 , Cagatay Savashan 3 , Gokhan Uckaya 1 , Cem Koz 4 , Halil Yaman 5 , Cengizhan Acikel 6 & Mustafa Kutlu 1


1GATA Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Ankara, Turkey; 2Department of Biochemistry, Diskapi Hospital, Ankara, Turkey; 3GATA Department of Family Medicine, Ankara, Turkey; 4GATA Department of Cardiology, Ankara, Turkey; 5GATA Department of Biochemistry, Ankara, Turkey; 6GATA Department of Public Health, Ankara, Turkey.


The relation between obesity and diabetes mellitus is known for long periods and this relation is based on insulin resistance. Recent studies showed that epicardial adipose tissue thickness measured by echocardiography is the marker of the visceral adipose tissue and cardiovascular risk. Visfatin is a new described adipokine and it has been showed to have mRNA expression in epicardial adipose tissue. There is a conflict about the role of visfatin on obesity, insulin resistance and type 2 DM pathogenesis.

In this study, we aimed to determine the relation between serum visfatin levels and epicardial adipose tissue thickness in different forms of diabetic patients.

We included a total of 128 persons in the study. Thirty-six patients were diabetic (diagnosed by 75 g OGTT), 69 were prediabetic and the remaining 23 were healthy (control). Serum biochemical measurements, body anthropometric measurements, epicardial adipose tissue thickness were calculated and recorded. The results were evaluated statistically.

Our study showed that epicardial adipose tissue thickness was higher in diabetic and prediabetic groups than control group and the difference was statistically significant (P=0.006 in diabetic group; P: 0.009 in prediabetic group). In diabetic and prediabetic patients there was no correlation between serum visfatin and epicardial adipose tissue thickness (P>0.05). On the other hand, in diabetic and prediabetic patients with obesity, the epicardial adipose tissue thickness was found to be correlated with serum visfatin levels and the correlation was statistically significant (P<0.05).

According to our results, epicardial adipose tissue thickness is an easy and cost effective method of detecting insulin resistance in visceral obese patients. Larger series are needed to determine the threshold levels of epicardial adipose tissue thickness which shows insulin resistance. We think that epicardial adipose tissue thickness may be an effective parameter in determining treatment modalities and drug choices in type 2 DM in future.

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