Endocrine Abstracts

Recent studies suggest that endotoxin from gut flora, may be key to development of inflammation by stimulating the secretion of an adverse cytokine profile from adipose tissue. The study investigated the relationship between endotoxin and various metabolic parameters of diabetic patients to determine if anti-diabetic therapies exerted a significant effect on endotoxin levels and adipocytokine profiles of T2DM subjects. Fasting blood samples were collected from consenting Saudi...

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 ...

The anorexigenic leptin and orexigenic ghrelin, are peripheral signals that control appetite via the hypothalamic neuropeptide Y (NPY) system. Ghrelin exists in an inactive (des-acyl) and active (octanoylated) form which acts via the GHS-R1a. Whilst a great deal is understood about central interaction of these peptides their peripheral pathways remain uncertain. Adipose tissue (AT) produces several neuropeptides. Due to the importance of AT in the control of energy homeostasis...

South Asian people have a lower threshold for obesity related complications than Caucasians and as a result have a higher risk of type 2 diabetes (T2DM) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) for a given BMI. Premature biological ageing, assessed by reduction in telomere length (TL), may be mediated by factors resulting from altered metabolic profiles associated with obesity and insulin resistance. We therefore hypothesised that IR is associated with altered metabolic profiles and t...

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...

Adipose tissue (AT) distribution impacts directly on type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease risk, however few studies have investigated the site-specific nature of human epicardial AT compared with gluteo-femoral (thigh) fat. Our recent studies have implicated epicardial AT as an important source of pro-inflammatory cytokines which may impact on myocardial function. Therefore the aim of this study was, using matched paired epicardial AT and gluteo-femoral (thigh) AT from p...

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...