Abstract
Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is associated with a high risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). Visfatin is an adipocytokine with insulin-like action and it’s closely related to the amount of visceral fats. The objective of our study was to evaluate serum visfatin levels among women with PCOS. Also, to evaluate the association between serum visfatin and cardio-metabolic risk factors as well as clinic-morphological features of PCOS.
Case control study enrolled 120 women diagnosed with PCOS and 80 healthy control women. PCOS cases were stratified according to their fasting plasma glucose (FPG) into three subgroups: those with normal glucose tolerance (NGT), impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Serum visfatin levels (ng/ml) were assessed by ELISA.
Our results revealed higher values of cardio-metabolic risks; total cholesterol, triglycerides, LDL cholesterol, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), fasting serum insulin (FSI), HbA1c, HOMA-IR, and FPG in PCOS compared to healthy women. In addition, compared with healthy women (28.66 ± 10.63), PCOS patients (87.98 ± 17.96) had significantly higher levels of serum visfatin. Among PCOS group, T2DM patients (119.59 ± 14.52) had significantly higher levels of serum visfatin compared to IGT (81.03 ± 15.81) and NGT (85.09 ± 11.01). Receiver operating characteristic analyses revealed that serum visfatin was a useful biomarker discriminating PCOS from control, the AUC was 0.989 with sensitivity = 99.2%, specificity = 99.8%, Additionally, the sensitivities and the specificities of visfatin in differentiating T2DM from NGT were (93.3% and 98.2%). Stepwise multiple linear regression analysis revealed that androstenedione, LH, free androgen index and ovarian volume were the main predictors of visfatin levels among PCOS.
Serum visfatin levels could discriminate PCOS from healthy control and T2DM from NGT PCOS women. Moreover, vesfatin was positive correlated to cardio-metabolic risk factors. Interestingly, the sensitivity and specificity power of vesfatin were high. Thus, it could be early predicting of cardio-metabolic risks among PCOS women and might be useful in therapeutic intervention in future.