Case Control Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Diabetes. Feb 15, 2020; 11(2): 42-51
Published online Feb 15, 2020. doi: 10.4239/wjd.v11.i2.42
Wrist circumference: A new marker for insulin resistance in African women with polycystic ovary syndrome
Chantal Anifa Amisi, Massimo Ciccozzi, Paolo Pozzilli
Chantal Anifa Amisi, Paolo Pozzilli, Endocrinology and Diabetes Unit, Department of Medicine, Universita Campus Bio-medico di Rome, Rome 00128, Italy
Massimo Ciccozzi, Medical Statistics and Epidemiology Unit, Department of Medicine, Universita Campus Bio-medico di Rome, Rome 00128, Italy
Author contributions: Amisi CA designed and performed the research, and wrote the paper; Amisi CA and Ciccozzi M analysed data; Pozzilli P made important intellectual contributions to the study design and supervised the study; Amisi CA and Pozzilli P revised the paper; the final manuscript draft was approved by all the authors.
Institutional review board statement: The Institutional Review Board of Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma provided approval for this study.
Informed consent statement: Written informed consent was obtained from each subject before entry into the study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Data sharing statement: Dataset can be provided by Chantal Anifa Amisi.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement–checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement–checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Chantal Anifa Amisi, MD, PhD, Doctor, Senior Researcher, Endocrinology and Diabetes Unit, Department of Medicine, Universita Campus Bio-medico di Roma, via Alvaro del Portillo 21, Rome 00128, Italy. chantalamisi@yahoo.fr
Received: July 1, 2019
Peer-review started: July 1, 2019
First decision: August 2, 2019
Revised: November 27, 2019
Accepted: December 14, 2019
Article in press: December 14, 2019
Published online: February 15, 2020
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is insulin-resistant and strongly associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases and diabetes in women. Early detection of insulin resistance (IR) could prevent these complications. There is no consensus regarding methods to predict IR in women with PCOS. Some structural body components have been evaluated in relation to IR in PCOS, and IR seems to be independent. In this article we tried for a new easy detectable marker for IR in women affected by PCOS.

Research motivation

We tried to develop a new easy marker for IR in women with PCOS to improve the diagnosis of IR in Sub-Saharan African women.

Research objectives

Our aim was to assess the wrist circumference in women affected by PCOS and living in Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of Congo, in relation to IR using the Homeostasis Model Assessment as a biological reference marker.

Research methods

This study was a prospective case-control study performed from October 2015 to December 2016 in Kinshasa. Seventy-two women with PCOS and 71 controls were enrolled. Parametric and non-parametric statistical test have been used where appropriated. The statistical analysis was performed using SPSS statistical software (version 16.0).

Research results

In this study we have found a significant difference for the Ferriman-Gallwey (F-G) score between the women with PCOS and controls as well as for insulinaemia and HOMA-IR (P <0.001). A strong correlation between the dominant WrC, non-dominant WrC, WC, BMI, Weight, WHtR and WHR have been found. The Receiver-Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, showed that the non-dominant wrist circumference has a 72% chance of predicting the presence of IR in women with PCOS.

Research conclusions

In the present study for the first time, we showed that the non-dominant wrist circumference is both, a marker of IR, and the best anthropometric marker known, to date for the assessment of IR in women with PCOS.

Research perspectives

This article could open new perspectives between IR and bone homeostasis in women with PCOS.