Correlation between Obesity and Inflammation in Cardiovascular Diseases—Evaluation of Leptin and Inflammatory Cytokines

Abstract

Obesity, an important risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD), is currently viewed as a pro-inflammatory state with an increase in the expression of inflammatory cytokines including Tumor Necrosis Factor-α (TNF-alpha) and Inter-leukin-6 (IL-6) along with the increased secretion of leptin. Serum leptin was estimated in 150 CVD patients (belonging to the age group of 35 -75 years) of different Body Mass Index (BMI) and its correlation to various biochemical pa-rameters including lipids, glucose and CRP was analyzed to study the association of leptin with CVD. Further to under-stand the relationship between obesity, inflammation and CVD, serum leptin, TNF-alpha, IL-6 was evaluated in 50 CVD and 50 non-CVD subjects. Results were presented as mean ±SD. A distinct correlation between leptin, TNF-al-pha, IL-6 and BMI was observed and these cytokines were elevated in CVD subjects. The protein expression of the monomeric form of CRP which is known to be expressed in pathological condition was found to be highly expressed in serum of CVD subjects. Further, to substantiate the role of inflammation in obesity related CVD, different concentra-tions of leptin were added to Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells (PBMC) isolated from twenty healthy volunteers of different BMI and the gene expression of TNF-alpha, IL-6 and Ob-Rb were studied. A significant increase in the level of these cytokines was observed with increasing leptin concentration. The results obtained from the present analysis suggest that inflammation may be a crucial factor involved in obesity associated CVD.