Synergistic effects of neck circumference and metabolic risk factors on insulin resistance: the Cardiometabolic Risk in Chinese (CRC) study

OBJECTIVES Recent studies have associated neck circumference (NC) with insulin resistance (IR). We examined whether such relation was modified by other metabolic risk factors. METHODS The study samples were from a community-based health examination survey in central China. A total of 2588 apparently healthy Chinese men and women were included. RESULTS Plasma levels of total cholesterol (TC), HDL-C, uric acid (UA) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) were independently associated with NC after adjusted for age, sex, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC) and hip circumference (HC) (P = 0.009, 0.001, 0.015 and 0.015, respectively). We observed significant interactions of NC with triglyceride (TG) and UA (all the p for interaction = 0.001) in relation to HOMA-IR. It appeared that the associations between NC and HOMA-IR were more evident in those with higher UA or TG level. CONCLUSIONS Our data indicate that in apparently healthy Chinese adults, there were synergistic effects of UA, TG and neck circumference on insulin resistance.