Welcome to InCirculation.net
InCirculation.net is a professional cardiovascular resource intended for a global audience of specialists, generalists, researchers, and other healthcare professionals
Cardiovascular news provides daily news updates to help you stay informed.
LAP strongly predicts metabolic syndrome in Argentinian men
2 July 2009
MedWire News: Lipid accumulation product (LAP), an index calculated from triglyceride concentration and waist circumference (WC), is an effective diagnostic predictor for the metabolic syndrome in Argentinian men, show study results.
“The metabolic syndrome is a constellation of cardiovascular and metabolic risk factors associated with insulin resistance, which predisposes individuals to diabetes, and appears to be a multifactorial risk factor for cardiovascular disease,” explain Mariano Taverna (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina) and colleagues.
LAP is calculated using the equation (WC-65) x triglycerides and has previously been shown to predict cardiovascular disease and diabetes risk, as reported by MedWire News.
In this study, Taverna and team tested its ability to predict the metabolic syndrome in a group of 601 healthy Argentinian men aged 36.9 years on average.
Writing in the journal Diabetes Care, the authors report that the prevalence of the metabolic syndrome in the cohort, as defined by the NCEP-ATP (National Cholesterol Education Program’s Adult Treatment Panel) III guidelines, was 26.3%.
Using area under the receiver operator curve (ROC) analysis, the researchers found that LAP had a high score of 0.91. This was significantly higher than the majority of other risk factors including homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance and fasting insulin.
The triglyceride-to-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol ratio had the next highest ROC score at 0.86.
“LAP could be associated with highly lipolytic adipose tissue,” suggest Taverna and co-workers. “Adipose tissue with high levels of lipolysis is an early and critical abnormality in the development of cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, and the metabolic syndrome.”
They conclude: “The reliability and potential utility of LAP in early detection of metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease indicate that further research should be undertaken using larger sample sizes and prospective designs.”
