The screening of dysglycemia in the non-fasting state is a challenging issue in healthcare practice. We investigated whether the additional measurement of circulating
adiponectin levels could improve screening performance. We used a database of 1190 Japanese employees with metabolic risk factors, who underwent a 75-g oral
glucose tolerance test (OGTT), following non-fasting health check-ups. Dysglycemia was defined as fasting
glucose levels ≥6.1 mmol/L or 2-hr
glucose levels ≥7.8 mmol/L during the OGTT. Logistic regression analysis revealed that decreased
adiponectin levels were associated with dysglycemia, independently of postprandial
glucose (PG) and
hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) levels, as well as other health check-up data (p<0.01). The trivariate model with PG, HbA1c, and
adiponectin levels (PG+A1c+ADN model) had a larger area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUC) than the bivariate model with only PG and HbA1c levels (0.746 vs. 0.729; p=0.01). However, the AUC of the multivariate model with PG, HbA1c, and other health check-up data, but not
adiponectin levels (PG+A1c+Other model) was 0.815, much larger than that of the PG+A1c+ADN model (p<0.01). The addition of
adiponectin levels to the PG+A1c+Other model had a significantly larger AUC than the A1c+PG+Other model only in the subgroup without
abdominal obesity (p=0.01), but not in the overall population (p=0.06) or in the subgroup with
abdominal obesity (p=0.62). In conclusion, circulating
adiponectin levels were independently associated with dysglycemia in non-fasting Japanese employees with metabolic risk factors, but they improved the screening capacity only in those without
abdominal obesity.