Thursday, May 1, 2008

I Thought We Had Established This


Apparently, I was wrong. Researchers in the UK have "discovered" that insulin resistance is more likely to occur in females that have PCOS than without.

These new findings demonstrate that the driving force behind the changes in PCOS is hyperinsulinemia and not the fat content. The methodology is interesting; the definition of PCOS encompasses the wide spectrum of the phenotype of the disease, which could weaken their findings. However, the MRI scanning of fat distribution is faultless. The researchers admirably highlighted their own limitations in the report, allowing us to look beyond these weaknesses and reflect on the findings. Their purist approach to match BMI and fat mass between the groups reduced their sample size to 22 matched pairs. The ages of the groups were unable to be matched; however, we agree with the researchers that this is a confounding variable.

Elegantly in a small sample the researchers have shown that the insulin resistance in PCOS is independent of visceral adiposity. We believe these findings bring us one step closer in unraveling the mechanism behind the metabolic abnormalities of PCOS, opening new doors for therapeutic intervention and prevention.

I mean, that's great that they've established it, but I thought we were beyond that.

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