Relationship between insulin resistance surrogates and bone mineral density in postmenopausal women

This study aimed to investigate the association between four insulin resistance (IR) surrogates and bone mineral density (BMD) and whether IR surrogates could be risk factors for osteoporosis (OP) in Chinese non-diabetic postmenopausal individuals.

Four non-insulin-based surrogates including triglyceride glucose (TyG), triglyceride glucose with body mass index (TyG-BMI), triglycerides (TG)/high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and the metabolic score for insulin resistance (METS-IR) index were calculated. All individuals underwent dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry for measurement of BMD. Pearson correlation analysis was employed to evaluate the correlations between IR indices and BMD. Subsequently, logistic regression analysis was performed to investigate the relationship between these indices and OP while the receiver-operating characteristic curve was used to assess the predictive values for OP.

Both TyG-BMI and the METS-IR index were significantly positively associated with BMD. As TyG-BMI and the METS-IR index increased, the prevalence of OP decreased. After adjusting confounding factors, the fourth quartile of TyG-BMI and the METS-IR index showed significantly decreased odds ratio of 0.304 and 0.352, respectively, for OP with respect to its first quartile value. The area under the curve of TyG-BMI and the METS-IR index was 0.616 and 0.605, respectively.

IR surrogates TyG-BMI and the METS-IR index were positively associated with BMD and may be protective factors for OP in Chinese non-diabetic postmenopausal women.