Chronic low-grade inflammation is strongly associated with a constellation of cardiometabolic risk factors in healthy individuals, an analysis of clinical data suggests.

Susanne de Rooij (VU University Medical Centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands) and team examined associations among inflammatory markers, insulin sensitivity, and a range of cardiometabolic risk factors in The Relationship between Insulin Sensitivity and Cardiovascular Disease (RISC) cohort ??” a large, healthy population of 1326 nondiabetic European men and women aged between 30 and 60 years.

White blood cell (WBC) counts and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) ??”considered to be markers of chronic inflammation ??” were strongly and negatively associated with insulin sensitivity in both men and women, de Rooij et al report in the journal Diabetes Care.

WBC and ESR were also correlated with a range of cardiometabolic risk factors, such as waist circumference, fat mass, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, triglycerides, heart rate, fasting C-peptide, proinsulin, insulin, and fasting hyperinsulinemia.

Interestingly, adjusting for insulin resistance did not markedly reduce the strength of these associations, indicating that insulin resistance, although strongly associated with inflammation, does not play a major intermediary role.

In their discussion, the authors remark that insulin has an anti-inflammatory effect and suggest that insulin resistance may prevent this effect. Alternatively, low-grade inflammation, insulin resistance, and hyperinsulinemia may all be manifestations of another underlying pathological condition, such as autonomic nervous-system dysfunction.

“This study showed that low-grade chronic inflammation is strongly associated with cardiometabolic risk in a healthy population,” de Rooij et al conclude.

“Insulin resistance… seems to be one of these cardiometabolic risk factors rather than an intermediary factor in the relation between inflammation and other cardiometabolic risk factors.”

MedWire (www.medwire-news.md) is an independent clinical news service provided by Current Medicine Group, a part of Springer Science+Business Media. © Current Medicine Group Ltd; 2009

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