Reactive oxygen species as potential mediators of obesity-related cardiovascular complications

Abstract

Obesity is the most common nutritional disorder in industrialized countries and morbid obesity is associated with increased mortality and morbidity due to the associated cardiometabolic complications: type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease (Ford 2004). By 2014, approximately 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and more than 700 million will be obese according to World Health Organization projections. The aim of this chapter is to examine the epidemiologic evidence linking obesity to oxidative stress, to explain the cellular mechanisms that are responsible for ROS generation in obesity and to establish the link to the etiology of insulin resistance, hypertension, renal disease, and atherosclerosis.