Teens, insulin, and heart disease.

Most adolescents have more urgent matters on their minds than the risk of heart disease decades hence. A new study suggests, however, that teens who respond sluggishly to the hormone insulin may run a greater risk of heart attacks later in life.

Adults with insulin resistance have an increased risk of heart disease (SN: 9/16/89, p. 184). Now, researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis report a statistical association in teenagers between insulin resistance and concentrations of fats known to be associated with heart disease.

Alan R. Sinaiko and his colleagues studied 85 boys and 96 girls between the ages of 11 and 14. The researchers gave them doses of insulin and the sugar glucose to test for insulin resistance, in which cells ignore insulin's message to take up the sugar. The body responds to the continued presence of glucose by pumping out more insulin, which some researchers suspect may play a role in the development of heart disease.

None of the teenagers showed evidence of heart disease, Sinaiko says, but those with insulin resistance typically had higher concentrations of triglycerides and lower amounts of high-density lipoproteins; in their blood than did those without insulin resistance. Presenting his team's findings last month at the American Heart Association's 51st annual conference on high blood pressure, held in Washington, D.C., Sinaiko warned that these risk factors may presage heart disease later in life.

"This is one study suggesting that perhaps we can identify at-risk people at a very young age," comments Theodore A. Kotchen of the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

Sinaiko and his colleagues hope that insulin resistance will serve as a red flag for the increased threat of cardiovascular disease. If at-risk adolescents can be taught to eat a low-fat diet and exercise faithfully, says Kotchen, they may be able to keep their hearts healthy well into the future.