[The importance of oral glucose tolerance test in diagnosis of glucose intolerance and type 2 diabetes mellitus in women with polycystic ovary syndrome]

To evaluate the importance of the oral glucose tolerance test for the diagnosis of glucose intolerance (GI) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM-2) in women with PCOS.A retrospective study was conducted on 247 patients with PCOS selected at random. The diagnosis of GI was obtained from the two-hour oral glucose tolerance test with 75 g of glucose according to the criteria of the World Health Organization (WHO) (GI: 120 minutes for plasma glucose140 mg/dL and200 mg/dL), and the diagnosis of DM-2 was obtained by both the oral glucose tolerance test (DM: 120 minutes for plasma glucose200 mg/dL) and fasting glucose using the criteria of the American Diabetes Association (impaired fasting glucose: fasting plasma glucose100 and126 mg/dL; DM: fasting glucose126 mg/dL). A logistic regression model for repeated measures was applied to compare the oral glucose tolerance test with fasting plasma glucose. ANOVA followed by the Tukey test was used for the analysis of the clinical and biochemical characteristics of patients with and without GI and/or DM-2. A p0.05 was considered statistically significant.PCOS patients had a mean age of 24.8±6.3, and body mass index (BMI) of 18.3 to 54.9 kg/m² (32.5±7.6). The percentage of obese patients was 64%, the percentage of overweight patients was 18.6% and 17.4% had healthy weight. The oral glucose tolerance test identified 14 cases of DM-2 (5.7%), while fasting glucose detected only three cases (1.2%), and the frequency of these disorders was higher with increasing age and BMI.The results of this study demonstrate the superiority of the oral glucose tolerance test in relation to fasting glucose in diagnosing DM-2 in young women with PCOS and should be performed in these patients.