"Single point insulin sensitivity estimator for predicting type 2 diabetes mellitus in obese adolescents" by Ha et al. [13] investigated the usefulness of this recently proposed insulin sensitivity marker, the single point insulin sensitivity estimator (SPISE) index, for detecting blood glucose abnormalities or diabetes mellitus in Korean children with obesity. The SPISE index is a lipid- and body mass index-based index of insulin sensitivity that can predict metabolic syndrome in adolescents and adults with more accuracy than other lipid and fasting insulin-based indicators [14]. Furthermore, a recent large-scale longitudinal study from Italy confirmed the superiority of the SPISE index for predicting the development of blood glucose abnormalities among overweight/obese children compared with other insulin resistance indices [14].

This research is meaningful since it is the first to examine the clinical utility of the SPISE index in Korean children and adolescents with type 2 diabetes. In this work, the authors suggested that a low SPISE index (<4.49) was an independent factor of type 2 diabetes mellitus in overweight/obese children, after adjusting for well-known risk factors including family history, fatty liver, and/or obesity [13]. The main limitation of this study was that it was cross-sectional with a small number of cases. Large-scale longitudinal studies are needed to confirm that the SPISE index could be useful for predicting future diabetes development in Korean children.