Study of the Relationship Between Insulin Resistance, Iron Status Markers, and Body Weight in a Sample of Egyptian Population.

BACKGROUND: Iron plays a key role in the regulation of body iron homeostasis and is used as a clinical marker for iron deficiency (ID) and hemochromatosis. The idea that iron dysregulation may contribute to various metabolic diseases, such as obesity, insulin resistance, MetS, and T2DM, is a hot topic of discussion.

AIM: The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship insulin resistance, iron status markers, and body weight in a sample of Egyptian population.

METHODS: A case control study was conducted on 90 subjects with age ranging from 18 to 70 years old from a diabetes outpatient clinic, and they were divided to three groups: Group I, non-obese-non-diabetic as the control group; Group II, obese-non-diabetic; and Group III, obese-diabetic.

RESULTS: In our study, there was no statistically significant difference between the three studied groups regarding the different iron parameters. Similarly, we found that neither HOMA-IR nor body weight had a significant correlation with iron status markers. On the contrary, we detected significant positive correlations between the TIBC and the fasting blood glucose, between the serum iron and the LDL, between the TSAT and the systolic blood pressure, and between the HOMA-IR and hematocrit.

CONCLUSION: Our study demonstrated no direct statistical significant relationship between the different iron parameters, obesity, and insulin resistance, either in the diabetic or non-diabetic subjects. This may be due to the complex metabolic dysregulation and the small number of the sample for future investigations.