Original Article

J Korean Soc Pediatr Endocrinol. 2005; 10(1): 84-89.

Gender Difference of Insulin Resistance in Obese Children and Adolescents.

Duk Hee Kim, Ji Hyun Yoon, Ho Seong Kim, Dong Kee Kim, and My Young Cheong

¹Department of Pediatrics, College of Medicine, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. dhkim3@yumc.yonsei.ac.kr
²Department of Biostatistics, College of Medicine, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea.

PURPOSE
It is known that insulin resistance is important because it may precede the development of Diabetes Mellitus. We evaluated the gender difference of insulin resistance in obese children & adolescents. METHODS: 92 obese children and 187 adolescents (age:5-16 y, >95th percentile of the body mass index [BMI] for age and sex) were included in this study. The abdominal fat, abdominal circumference, and intraabdominal fat depth (IAFD), plasma fasting insulin, leptin, adiponectin, lipid profiles and high sensitive-C reactive protein (hs-CRP) were measured, and a two-hour oral glucose tolerance test with insulin measurement were performed.
RESULTS
The plasma total cholesterol, leptin, fasting insulin & HOMA-IR levels of obese females were higher than those of obese males. The sex, waist circumference, IAFD & adiponectin levels were strongly correlated with HOMA-IR by multiple linear regression analysis (P<0.05).
CONCLUSION
Adolescent females may have specific fat distribution and were expressed to have higher leptin and relatively lower adiponectin concentration compared to adolescent males, developing higher insulin resistance, even though having lesser abdominal fat and waist size. Further investigation is required to verify the gender difference of insulin resistance in obese children and adolescents.

Keywords : Insulin resistance, Obesity, Children, Adolescents, Adiponectin, HOMA-IR