Evaluation of Triglyceride Glucose Index and Homeostasis Model of Insulin Resistance in Patients with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome

PURPOSE: To use the triglyceride glucose (TyG) index to evaluate insulin resistance (IR) in patients with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and to explore alternative indicators for early identification of IR. PATIENTS AND METHODS: This study included 114 patients with PCOS and 61 healthy volunteers. Pearson or Spearman correlations were calculated to compare the association between the TyG index and triglyceride glucose body mass index (TyG-BMI) with homeostatic model assessment for IR (HOMA-IR), homeostasis model assessment for β-cell function (HOMA-β), quantitative insulin sensitivity check index (QUICKI), and fasting glucose-to-insulin ratio (FG-IR). The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of the TyG index and TyG-BMI in identifying IR (defined as HOMA-IR ≥2.5) in patients with PCOS. RESULTS: Correlation analyses revealed that the TyG index of the PCOS group was positively correlated with HOMA-IR (r=0.515, P<0.01) and HOMA-β (r=0.348, P<0.01), but negatively correlated with QUICKI (r=−0.532, P<0.01) and FG-IR (r=−0.394, P<0.01). The ROC curve of IR defined by HOMA-IR showed that the AUC value of TyG-BMI was the highest, at 0.796 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.710–0.866, P<0.001) when the cut-off point was 191.53, with 85.3% sensitivity and 73.9% specificity values. For the TyG index, the AUC was 0.781 (95% CI: 0.693–0.853, P<0.001) when 8.51 was the cut-off point, with a sensitivity of 63.2% and specificity of 87.0%. CONCLUSION: This study found that the TyG index and TyG-BMI performed better than traditional lipid ratios, such as triglycerides/high density lipoprotein cholesterol (TG/HDL-C), in predicting IR and may be used as markers of IR in Chinese patients with PCOS.