Fasting triglyceride is a major determinant of postprandial triglyceride response in postmenopausal women.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of the study was to examine the relative influences of fasting lipids, insulin resistance, and waist circumference (WC) on postprandial lipemia in postmenopausal women.

DESIGN: Forty-nine naturally postmenopausal women were recruited for the study. Each woman underwent a 75-g oral glucose tolerance test to measure insulin resistance and a 1,000-kcal high-fat mixed meal test for postprandial triglyceride (TG) response.

RESULTS: The participants were divided into three groups by tertiles of incremental TG response in the mixed meal test. The three groups were comparable in weight, WC, and fasting high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) levels. There were significant differences in fasting TG and non-HDL-C concentrations among the three groups. The women in the high-tertile group were more insulin resistant than those in the low-tertile group, indicated by higher homeostasis model assessment for insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) values. The postprandial TG response was significantly correlated with Log(fasting TG), fasting non-HDL-C and Log(HOMA-IR), but not with WC, in univariate regression analyses. Log(fasting TG) was the only variable that remained significantly related to incremental TG response when all the above were entered into multiple regression models. Subsequently, we found that Log(HOMA-IR) and fasting non-HDL-C independently predicted the variance of Log(fasting TG) in stepwise multiple regression.

CONCLUSIONS: Our data demonstrated that the fasting TG level is a major determinant of postprandial TG response in postmenopausal women. Insulin resistance and non-HDL-C may contribute independently to the fasting TG level. The influences of WC on postprandial lipemia seemed to be insignificant.