Obesity and cardiac dysfunction

Abstract

The dramatic increase in the prevalence of obesity and its strong association with cardiovascular disease has resulted in unprecedented interest in understanding the effects of obesity on the cardiovascular system. A consistent but puzzling clinical observation is that obesity confers an increased susceptibility to the development of cardiac disease, while at the same time affording protection against subsequent mortality (termed the obesity paradox). This chapter will review the current state of knowledge concerning cardiac dysfunction in humans with obesity, review studies that have been performed in animal models, shed some insight into molecular mechanisms that lead to cardiac dysfunction in obesity, and discuss potential mechanisms that can contribute to cardiac dysfunction in obesity that represent attractive testable hypotheses. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.