Endocrine Abstracts

Replacement with mono-unsaturated fatty acids (MUFA) or poly-unsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) reduces inflammation in the pre-diabetic subjects but the benefits are unclear in subjects with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Our aim was to investigate whether saturated fatty acids (SFA), MUFA and PUFA produce a similar adipocyte inflammatory response, which may explain the rationale for maintained systemic inflammation noted in subjects with T2DM. The differentiated human preadipo...

Background: Adipose tissue (AT) may have a significant role in obesity associated inflammation but, the mechanisms underlying the pathogenesis of obesity induced inflammation remains unclear. Recent murine studies indicate that ER stress is critical to the initiation and integration of inflammation and insulin signalling pathways. The ER stress occurs primarily due to accumulation of unfolded proteins and results in activation of the unfolded protein response to restore ER hom...

Mitochondria are essential for synthesising ATP required for cellular metabolism. In response to changes in their cellular environment, mitochondria are able to alter their morphology and abundance through the balance of “fusion” and “fission” events. The aim of this study was to profile the expression of mitochondrial genes in the abdominal subcutaneous (AbSc) adipose tissue (AT) of lean, obese and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) individuals and determine ...

Background and aims: The mechanisms in HIV by which mitochondrial dysfunction occurs, leading to impaired energy homeostasis and metabolic regulation, are unclear; although similarities are noted in T2DM. Therefore, we investigated the effect of HIV status and ARV therapy on several mitochondrial and nuclear encoded genes related to mitochondrial metabolism and energy homeostasis.Materials and methods: Subcutaneous AT biopsies from the ileac crest were o...

Habitual post-prandial absorption of saturated fatty acids (SFAs) increases systemic atherogenic lipoproteins and a pro-inflammatory response, a condition exacerbated by obesity, insulin resistance (IR) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Also, gut derived bacteria (endotoxin) is absorbed coupled to damaging lipoproteins as it crosses the mucosa, which could directly impact on adipose tissue, as our previous studies suggest. The current studies addressed whether a SFA rich me...

Background: Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress in adipose tissue (AT) is critical to the initiation and integration of inflammation and insulin signalling pathways in obese and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients. It induces an unfolded protein response (UPR) to restore functional integrity which leads to upregulation of three master regulators of ER; PKR-like ER-regulated kinase (PERK), inositol requiring enzyme1α (IRE1α) and activating transcription factor6 (AT...

Chronic elevation of saturated fatty acids (SFAs) and glucose (Glc) appears to activate an inflammatory response; compounded by habitual feeding. Restoration of physiological SFAs and Glc levels post-prandially may not attenuate the original insult; a concept termed ‘metabolic memory’. Therefore we investigated (1) the effect of chronic and oscillating SFAs and Glc on the inflammatory pathway in human abdominal subcutaneous (AbdSc) adipose tissue (AT) and adipocytes ...

Materials and methods: Paired AbSc and Om AT were collected from patients undergoing elective liposuction surgery (Age; 45±1.72 years; lean BMI; 22.91±0.56 kg/m2; obese BMI; 33.51±1.04 kg/m2; n=23) for gene expression analysis by microarray and real time polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Fasted blood was taken to measure metabolic parameters.Results: Microarray data showed that Om AT had signi...

Objective: The adipocytokine visfatin, expressed in abdominal adipose tissue (AT) is thought to mimic insulin activity. However, whilst central adiposity is closely related to insulin resistance (IR) and T2DM, visfatins’ role in the development of these conditions remains unclear.Method: We investigated circulating visfatin levels in non-diabetic (ND) and diabetic (T2DM) subjects and in T2DM patients pre- and post- rosiglitazone (RSG) treatment. We ...

Mitochondrial dysfunction has been implicated in the pathogenesis of obesity and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM). Recent research has investigated the role of mitochondria in skeletal muscle and suggesting mitochondrial dysregulation may be linked to T2DM. To date few studies have focused on the role of human adipose tissue (AT) in energy homoeostasis. Therefore we investigated a number of mitochondrial genes including PPARγ co-activator1 (PGC1α, mitochondrial biogen...