Synergistic effects of neck circumference and metabolic risk factors on insulin resistance: the Cardiometabolic Risk in Chinese (CRC) study

Objectives: Recent studies have associated neck circumference (NC) with insulin resistance (IR). We examined whether such relation was modified by other metabolic risk factors. Methods: The study samples were from a community-based health examination survey in central China. A total of 2588 apparently healthy Chinese men and women were included. Results: Plasma levels of total cholesterol (TC), HDL-C, uric acid (UA) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) were independently associated with NC after adjusted for age, sex, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC) and hip circumference (HC) (P = 0.009, 0.001, 0.015 and 0.015, respectively). We observed significant interactions of NC with triglyceride (TG) and UA (all the p for interaction = 0.001) in relation to HOMA-IR. It appeared that the associations between NC and HOMA-IR were more evident in those with higher UA or TG level. Conclusions: Our data indicate that in apparently healthy Chinese adults, there were synergistic effects of UA, TG and neck circumference on insulin resistance.