Does insulin resistance correlate with routine blood examination? A review on erythrocytes of obese patients.

AIM To identify whether hyperinsulinemia/insulin resistance affects the hematologic parameter of routine blood, especially the erythrocytes. METHODS Cross sectional study was conducted on seventy one non-smoking obese patients who were not pregnant, not having lactating period, aged >22 years of age and visited the outpatient clinic of Endocrinology and outpatient clinic of Kidney and Hypertension division at the department of Internal Medicine Dr. Sardjito Hospital, Yogyakarta. Patients with cerebrovascular and blood disease; taking drugs affecting blood e.g.: cytostatics, and erythropoietin; and patients taking insulin, beta blocker, or steroids were excluded. Data on age, gender, body weight, and body height were recorded. Examinations on fasting blood glucose, fasting insulin, total cholesterol, triglycerides, high density lipoprotein (HDL), low density lipoprotein (LDL), and routine blood were performed in the condition of ten hours of fasting. All laboratory examination was conducted at Prodia Laboratory, Yogyakarta. RESULTS Of seventy one obese patients, 51.5% were male, and 9.1% were diagnosed with diabetes mellitus (DM) during the study and the mean age was 47.09+5.74 years, the mean body mass index was 28.07+4.07 kg/m(2), the mean of hemoglobin level was 13.75+1.57 g%; the mean of leukocyte count was 7.86+1.19 103/mm(3); erythrocytes count was 4.93+0.44 106/mm(3); platelet count 300.28+80.57 103/mm(3); and hematocrite count 41.23+4.28. There were very weak and statistically insignificant negative correlation between Log HOMA IR and erythrocytes (r= -0.048; p=0.693) CONCLUSION This study demonstrates that insulin resistance has a very weak correlation with erythrocytes counts and it is statistically insignificant.