Clinical Study Idiopathic Hirsutism and Insulin Resistance

Copyright © 2013 Afsaneh Talaei et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Background and Objectives. Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and idiopathic hirsutism (HI) are the two most common causes of hirsutism. Insulin resistance plays a key role in PCOS, but there are not enough data showing that patients with HI also have insulin resistance. This study was designed to evaluate the presence of insulin resistance in women with HI. Methods. Based on a cross-sectional study, two groups of age-BMI matched, hirsute women were compared to age-BMI matched, nonhirsute women. Sixty nonobese women with PCOS, thirty nonobese women with HI, and sixty nonobese control women were included in the study. Samples of hormones including androgens were measured. Insulin resistance based on homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) was compared between three groups by the Kruskal-Wallis test. Results. Patients with PCOS had significantly higher basal insulin level (16.04 ± 1.4 versus 7.32 ± 6.8