Endocrine Abstracts

Background and objectives: Obesity-associated inflammation is a key contributory factor in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Murine studies have revealed potential links between obesity-induced activation of the innate immune response and endoplasmic reticular (ER) stress. Our aims were therefore to (1) examine whether human abdominal subcutaneous (AbSc) adipose tissue (AT) obtained from lean and obese patients, differs in the level of ER stress, through ass...

Aims/hypothesis: Adiponectin is an adipocyte-derived secretory factor that is highly specifically expressed in adipocytes. It exerts effects on energy homeostasis via peripheral and central mechanisms. However, it is not clear whether adiponectin is crossing the blood brain barrier in humans. In serum, adiponectin circulates in several different complexes, each of which has distinct functions. Here, we wanted to test whether adiponectin can be found in human cerebrospinal flui...

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 ...

Central obesity is strongly associated with sub-clinical inflammation, insulin resistance (IR) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), but the intracellular mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis of central obesity remain unclear. Recent studies have implicated NFκB and c-jun N terminal kinase (JNK) as central molecules linking insulin action and inflammation in mice. As such we examined (1) the inflammatory intracellular signaling pathways involving NFκB, JNK as a pot...