Since insulin resistance [54], abdominal obesity [55, 56], and glucose excursion [57] were also found to play important roles in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis, higher HbA1c and GA levels may contribute to increased carotid IMT through insulin resistance, glucose excursion as well as AGEs, and this might be the reason why measurements of HbA1c and GA improve the discriminative ability for the presence of carotid wall thickening. This evidence concerns the gene INS and Abdominal obesity.