Glucose Tolerance and Insulin Resistance in Non-obese, Non-diabetic Hypertensives

Relations of resistance to insulin-stimulated glucose uptake, secondary hyperinsulinemia, high blood pressure, abnormalities of lipoprotein metabolism and atherosclerotic coronary heart disease are interesting topics of medical investigations. The purpose of this study was to compare nondiabetic nonobese hypertensive with normotensive cases who were also neither diabetic nor nonobese from the point of tissue insulin resistance, triglyceride (TG) and cholesterol levels. Oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT), an indirect method for determining insulin resistance, was used in this study. The major finding of our study was that fasting insulin levels of hypertensives (11.1±5.5 µU/ml) were significantly greater than normotensives (7.8±4.1 µU/ml). This was considered to be related to insulin resistance. Another finding was that prevalence of impaired OGTT is 33% in the hypertensive study group.