Associations between the levels of circulating inflammatory adipokines and the risk of type 2 diabetes in Chinese male individuals: A case–control study

BACKGROUND: Whether the levels of circulating inflammatory adipokines affect the progression of type 2 diabetes (T2D) remains unclear. This study aimed to assess the association between circulating inflammatory adipokine levels and risk of T2D. METHODS: This case-control study involved 130 individuals consisting of 66 healthy controls (Control group) and 64 patients with T2D (T2D group) in Lishui Municipal Central Hospital from January 2017 to June 2017. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was applied to assess the associations between circulating inflammatory adipokine levels and the risk of T2D. RESULTS: There were significant differences in the levels of adiponectin (p = 0.013) and visfatin (p < 0.001) between the T2D and Control groups. In contrast, no significant differences in leptin (p = 0.113), TNF-α (p = 0.632), and IL-6 (p = 0.156) levels were found between the groups. Multivariate logistic regression indicated that elevated visfatin level was associated with an increased risk of T2D (OR: 3.543; 95% CI: 1.771-7.088; p < 0.001), while adiponectin (OR: 1.946; 95% CI: 0.925-4.094; p = 0.079), leptin (OR: 3.723; 95% CI: 0.788-17.583; p = 0.097), TNF-α (OR: 1.081; 95% CI: 0.911-1.281; p = 0.373), and IL-6 (OR: 0.878; 95% CI: 0.657-1.173; p = 0.379) were not associated with the risk of T2D. CONCLUSIONS: This study found elevated visfatin levels are associated with an increased risk of T2D, while adiponectin, leptin, TNF-α, and IL-6 are not. These findings should be further verified by a large-scale prospective study.