Background: Diagnosis of the metabolic syndrome (MS) is crucial for health care practitioners to identify at risk\r\npeople for early treatment. Visceral obesity may make unnecessary other laborious measures of insulin resistance.\r\nThe aim of this study was to see whether waist circumference (WC) can predict insulin resistance as well as MS in a\r\ngroup of Iranian elderly.\r\nMethods: Out of 94 nondiabetic elderly, thirty three subjects were recognized with MS. MS diagnosis was based on\r\nNCEP ATP III (National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III) and IDF (International Diabetes\r\nFederation) definitions. HOMA (Homeostasis Model Assessment) index was used to measure insulin sensitivity.\r\nInsulin resistance (IR) was defined as top quartile of HOMA.\r\nResults: In both sexes, WC and HOMA index were significantly positively correlated. The optimal waist\r\ncircumference (OWC) cutoff point was 94.5 cm for men and 90.5 cm for women. The high sensitivity (0.80) and\r\nspecificity (0.84) of WC in males indicates the proportion of IR which is correctly identified and recognizes all non-IR\r\nmales as such. In regression model only the TG level was associated with WC. But the WC is strongly associated\r\nwith HOMA-IR.\r\nConclusions: While OWC is very likely a good measure to exclude non-IR subjects in our study, determination of\r\noptimal WC to identify elderly IR subjects warrants further study in a larger sample of the general population.
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