Research Article Insulin Resistance in Adipose Tissue but Not in Liver Is Associated with Aortic Valve Calcification Esteban Jorge-Galarza, 1 Carlos Posadas-Romero, 1 Margarita Torres-Tamayo, 1 Aida X. Medina-Urrutia, 1 Marco A. Rodas-Díaz, 2 Rosalinda Posadas-Sánchez, 1 Gilberto Vargas-Alarcón, 3 María del Carmen González-Salazar, 1 Guillermo C. Cardoso-Saldaña, 1 and Juan G. Juárez-Rojas 1 1 Endocrinology Department, National Institute of Cardiology Ignacio Ch´ avez, Mexico City, Mexico 2 Cardiolology Department, San Juan de Dios General Hospital, Guatemala, Guatemala 3 Molecular Biology Department, National Institute of Cardiology Ignacio Ch´ avez, Mexico City, Mexico Correspondence should be addressed to Juan G. Ju´ arez-Rojas; gaboyk2@gmail.com Received 17 October 2016; Accepted 7 December 2016 Academic Editor: Kailash Gulshan Copyright © 2016 Esteban Jorge-Galarza et al. Tis 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. Insulin resistance is involved in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease, but its relationship with cardiovascular calcifcation has yielded conficting results. Te purpose of the present study was to investigate the role of hepatic and adipose tissue insulin resistance on the presence of coronary artery (CAC > 0) and aortic valve calcifcation (AVC > 0). Methods. In 1201 subjects (52% women, 53.6 ± 9.3 years old) without familiar and personal history of coronary heart disease, CAC and AVC were assessed by multidetector-computed tomography. Cardiovascular risk factors were documented and lipid profle, infammation markers, glucose, insulin, and free fatty acids were measured. Hepatic insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) and adipose tissue insulin resistance (Adipo-IR) indices were calculated. Results. Tere was a signifcant relationship between HOMA-IR and Adipo-IR indices ( = 0.758,  < 0.001). Participants in the highest quartiles of HOMA-IR and Adipo-IR indices had a more adverse cardiovascular profle and higher prevalence of CAC > 0 and AVC > 0. Afer full adjustment, subjects in the highest quartile of Adipo-IR index had higher odds of AVC > 0 (OR: 2.40; 95% CI: 1.30–4.43), as compared to those in the lowest quartile. Conclusions. Adipo-IR was independently associated with AVC > 0. Tis suggests that abnormal adipose tissue function favors insulin resistance that may promote the development and progression of AVC. 1. Introduction Aortic valve calcifcation (AVC) is defned as calcifed and thickened aortic leafets that do not impair the blood fow [1]. It is the most common heart valve disorder, increases with age, and may refect a generalized process of atherosclerosis [2, 3]. Comparable to AVC, coronary artery calcifcation (CAC) is a specifc atherosclerosis marker that correlates with plaque burden and has been a good predictor of future cardiovascular outcomes in the general population [3]. Some studies have shown that AVC and CAC share mechanistic similarities such as infammatory processes, oxidative stress, dyslipidemia, and endothelial dysfunction [4, 5]. Most of these risk factors are systemic metabolic insults associated with the proatherogenic milieu of insulin resistance (IR) [6, 7]. IR is characterized by decreased insulin-mediated glucose disposal into peripheral tissues and has been com- monly determined by the mathematical model described by Matthews et al. [8]. Using this model (HOMA-IR) some [9], but not all [10, 11], studies, have shown an association between IR and CAC. Similarly, although some recent reports have shown that IR, defned by high HOMA-IR, could play an important role in the mineralization of the aortic valve [1, 4, 6], other investigations showed that this associ- ation was not independent from cardiovascular risk factors [12]. Hindawi Publishing Corporation Disease Markers Volume 2016, Article ID 9085474, 9 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/9085474