The novel predictor of metabolic risk in patients with polycystic ovary syndrome: could it be the visceral adiposity index?

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is the most common endocrinological disorder in women of reproductive age, often accompanied by high androgen levels, irregular menstrual cycles and polycystic ovaries. In addition, patients with PCOS also present with an increase in abdominal adipose tissue and insulin resistance. Recently, the gender-specific mathematical formulation called visceral adiposity index (VAI) has been widely used in assessing cardiometabolic risk. This study aimed at comparing the VAI values of patients with PCOS, patients with idiopathic hirsutism (IH) and a control group.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: We obtained demographic data, laboratory results and anthropometric measurements of patients from the hospital database. We retrospectively grouped all cases included in the study as PCOS (n = 52), IH (n = 57) and control (n = 58) according to the diagnoses. We also took venous samples for hormone and biochemical tests in the early follicular phase of the menstrual cycle, at least 8-10 hours after fasting in the early morning hours. Finally, we evaluated the variables using SPSS 22.0 software (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA).

RESULTS: We included 167 female individuals in the study. Of these, 57 (34.1%) were diagnosed with IH, while 52 (31.1%) were diagnosed with PCOS. The control group comprised 58 (34.8%) healthy female individuals. The median age of the study group was 25 years [interquartile range (IQR) = 8 years]. The age, height, weight, body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference values of the groups were similar. We found that the VAI values among the groups were significantly different (p = 0.028). Post-hoc analysis determined that this was due to the difference between the group with PCOS and the control group. In addition, we found significantly high HOMA-IR, fasting insulin and androgen levels in the group with PCOS (p < 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS: After comparing data in groups with similar BMI levels, we found significantly high VAI values in patients with PCOS. The results reinforce the idea that VAI is a useful marker easily obtained in daily practice for assessing the cardiometabolic risk of patients with PCOS.