Conditions: Abdominal Obesity Insulin Resistance Hypertriglyceridemia
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 39
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
The purpose of the study is to examine whether a medication called acipimox can improve your body's mitochondria. Mitochondria are the "power house" of the cell and make energy for your body.

Obesity is associated with increased risk for developing diabetes. However, the investigators do not know how obesity leads to diabetes. Previous studies have shown levels of fat in the blood (free fatty acids or FFA) are higher in obesity, and elevated FFA can affect how our body uses glucose and responds to insulin. Recent studies have shown that changes in mitochondria may be involved in the development of diabetes and may be affected by FFA. The investigators propose to improve the function of mitochondria in obese people with pre-diabetes by treating with acipimox, a medication which decreases FFA. The investigators will use state of the art techniques to evaluate the mitochondria, including a new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique to measure function of mitochondria in muscle.

Detailed description:

Arms:
arm 1: Treatment with the study drug Acipimox arm 2: Treatment with Placebo control.

Interventions: intervention 1: Acipimox intervention 2: Placebo
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: 250 mg by mouth (PO) three times daily intervention 2: 0 mg by mouth (PO) three times daily

Protocol document: