Attenuated metabolic effect of waist measurement in Japanese female patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus

Waist circumference (WC) was measured in 200 Japanese patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM: male 106, female 94, mean age 61 years old) who had been admitted in our hospital, and relationship with various risk factors to predict future cardiovascular disease (CVD) was analyzed. There was a positive and statistically significant trend in WC levels with an increasing number of CVD risk factors in male patients, whereas no significant trend of WC was observed in female patients. The receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve for WC to predict the presence of two or more risk factors of CVD depicted greater area under the curve in male patients (0.732) than that in female patients (0.571). Apart from positive correlation with fasting serum C-peptide (S-CPR) and log-transformed high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (log HS-CRP) in both genders, WC was positively correlated with log-transformed triglyceride (log TG), systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DBP) and negatively with HDL-cholesterol (HDL-C) in male patients, whereas it was negatively correlated with HbA1c and fasting plasma glucose (FPG) in female patients. The change of WC after administration (ΔWC) was correlated with ΔS-CPR, ΔLDL-C, ΔSBP and ΔDBP in male patients, while no relationship was observed in female patients. In conclusion, WC is a reliable marker to predict future CVD events at least in Japanese male, but not female patients with T2DM.