BACKGROUND

Patients with obesity during childhood have an increased risk of fatal and non-fatal cardiovascular events during adulthood. The severity of obesity is commonly determined by BMI. However, children with relatively low BMI may have high cardiometabolic risk. Indeed, BMI-based obesity classifications might miss children at high cardiometabolic risk. Insulin has been suggested as a marker of cardiometabolic risk. In this study, we therefore estimated and compared cardiometabolic risk using either the BMI standard deviation score (BMI-SDS) or fasting insulin in an international cohort of children and adolescents with obesity and lean controls.

METHODS

Study participants (712 with obesity and 99 lean controls), aged 3 to 18 years, were categorized according to their BMI-SDS as lean or obesity class I, II, or III, or by their fasting insulin quartiles as quartile 1, 2, 3, or 4 with the lean subjects in a separate control group. Prevalence of cardiometabolic risk factors was assessed in each group. Sensitivity and specificity analyses for cardiometabolic risk were conducted for both BMI-SDS and fasting insulin. Multiple regression, logistic regression, and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses were performed between fasting insulin, BMI-SDS and cardiometabolic risk factors.

RESULTS

An elevated prevalence of the cardiometabolic risk factors dyslipidemia, dysglycemia and hypertension was observed in both increasing BMI-SDS classes and increasing fasting insulin quartiles. Fasting insulin demonstrated higher areas under the curve (AUC) for detecting dyslipidemia, dysglycemia, and the combination of dyslipidemia, dysglycemia, and hypertension, compared to BMI-SDS. BMI-SDS demonstrated a higher AUC for detecting hypertension compared to fasting insulin. The same patterns were seen for the logistic regression. However, fasting insulin had an overall stronger association with the cardiometabolic risk factors studied compared to BMI-SDS.

CONCLUSIONS

In children and adolescents with obesity, fasting insulin provides complementary information to BMI-SDS in identifying those with elevated cardiometabolic risk factors. While neither marker alone offers strong predictive accuracy, incorporating fasting insulin into clinical assessment may help prioritize individuals who require more detailed evaluation. An elevated fasting insulin value may warrant further investigation among children and adolescents with obesity, independent of obesity class based on BMI-SDS.