Diagnostic value of insulin resistance-based biomarkers in arterial hypertension

Insulin resistance (IR) is a key cardiometabolic abnormality involved in the development and progression of hypertension and is closely associated with diabetes mellitus, metabolic syndrome, and cardiovascular disease. Surrogate markers derived from routinely available laboratory parameters that do not require insulin measurement are gaining increasing importance in the assessment of metabolic risk among patients with hypertension. In this retrospective study, we evaluated the associations between insulin resistance indices calculated from routine laboratory parameters (TyG index, TyG-BMI, TG/HDL ratio, and METS-IR) and clinical characteristics in patients with essential hypertension and in those with both essential hypertension and type 2 diabetes mellitus. The investigated indices differed significantly between the study groups and proved useful for identifying metabolic abnormalities. Among these markers, METS-IR demonstrated superior performance in reflecting cardiometabolic risk, whereas the simpler indices, particularly the TyG index, appear to be more suitable as screening tools. These findings suggest that insulin resistance-based indices may facilitate the early identification of metabolic risk and improve cardiometabolic risk stratification in patients with hypertension.