Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction and aim: The incidence of atherosclerotic vascular disease is high in obesity. Our aim is to determine the mean platelet volume (MPV) as a new indicator of atherosclerosis in morbid obesity.

Materials and methods: Thirty-three patients with morbid obesity who applied to endocrinology department (mean age 41.5±11.3 years, body weight 118.2±16.9 kg and BMI: 45.9±7.2 kg/m²) and 39 age-matched (mean age 35.3±13.1 years; body weight 60.4±11.3 kg; BMI: 21.6±2.6 kg/m²) healthy individuals were included in the study. Patients have haematological and other endocrinological diseases were excluded from the study. All complete blood count analysis was performed by automatic analyser.

Results: We found that mean MPV values and platelet counts in morbid obesity group were higher than control subjects (8.7±1.1 and 6.9±0.5 fl, P=0.0001; 267 921.2±81 475/mm³ 0.3; 163 710.8±13 993.3×103/μl, P=0.0001, respectively). In addition, neutrophil lymphocyte ratio in morbid obesity group was not significantly different than those in control subjects (1.9±0.7 and 1.7±1.0, P=0.225, respectively). In addition, platelet to lymphocyte ratio was not statistically different between groups (102.9±32.1 in morbid obesity and 104.8±38.3 in control group). No statistically significant differences were found for the other parameters such as lymphocyte, WBC count and PCT. There were positive correlations both between MPV and BMI (r=0.649, P=0.0001) and between MPV and body weight (r=0.599, P=0.0001).

Conclusions: High MPV was associated with the presence of more metabolically active platelets. Therefore, increases of MPV in morbid obesity may lead to high risk for atherosclerosis.