Association of leptin with cardiometabolic factors in schoolchildren and adolescents with congenital adrenal hyperplasia.

Introduction: In congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), obesity, hyperinsulinemia and leptin levels are increased.

Objective: To identify the frequency of cardiometabolic risk factors (CRF) in children and adolescents with CAH and to explore the relationship with leptin levels.

Method: Cross-sectional study of 40 patients who underwent anthropometric measurements and had fasting glucose, insulin, triglycerides, 17-hidroxyprogesterone, leptin, HDL and LDL-cholesterol assessed. The patients were classified according to the number of CRFs, and leptin levels were analyzed with the Kruskal-Wallis test. Pearson's correlation was applied between leptin, body mass index (BMI) z-score and body fat percentage.

Results: Fifty percent of the patients had obesity and overweight, 59% had hypertriglyceridemia, 40%, hypoalphalipoproteinemia, 27.5%, high LDL-cholesterol and 22.5% insulin resistance. There was positive correlation between leptin and body fat percentage (r = 0.64), BMI z-score (r = 0.55) and the number of CRFs (r = 0.65). In the obesity-adjusted multivariate analysis, leptin levels were associated with the number of CRFs.

Conclusion: CAH had a high frequency of CRFs and leptin appeared to be associated with a more adverse cardiometabolic profile in subjects with obesity and overweight.