Calculated whole blood viscosity in non-diabetic subjects with asymptomatic carotid atherosclerosis: How insulin resistance may affect blood viscosity.

Background and objective: Asymptomatic atherosclerosis is an important early marker of vascular damage and, among its risk factors, hemorheological alterations play an important role.

Patients and methods: In a cohort of 85 non-diabetic subjects with asymptomatic carotid atherosclerosis (ACA), we have measured whole blood viscosity (cWBV) according to the haematocrit and plasma fibrinogen level. The cWBV distinguish the subgroup of ACA subjects with 3-5 cardiovascular risk factors (CRFs) from that with 1-2 CRFs and the same behavior is present for haematocrit and plasma fibrinogen level. Therefore, we divided the whole group of ACA subjects according to the medians of the four surrogate indexes with an insulin resistance degree of TG/HDL-C, TyG, VAI and LAP.

Results: The analysis of the correlation between cWBV and each index of insulin resistance has shown that no correlation is present in the whole group and in the group of ACA subjects with 1-2 CRFs, while in the subgroup with 3-5 CRFs there is a positive correlation between cWBV with TG/HDL-C and TyG at a low degree of statistical significance.

Conclusions: The date underline that subjects with this clinical condition have an unaltered evaluation of the cWBV compared to the other indices.