Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Adipose tissue is a source of peptides with paracrine and endocrine actions, called adipokines. Adipokines produced by periadventitial fat have been implicated in vascular pathology, including atherosclerosis. We investigated the expression of novel adipokines chemerin and vaspin, as well as visfatin, apelin and adiponectin in human pericoronary and periaortic fat in correlation with coronary and aortic atherosclerosis.

Methods: Paraffin embedded samples of human left coronary arteries (n=40) and abdominal aortas (n=40), including periadventitial fat, were evaluated for chemerin, vaspin, visfatin, apelin and adiponectin expression using immunohistochemistry. AHA classification was used for atherosclerosis assessment. PASW Statistics was used for statistical analysis.

Results: Chemerin, vaspin, visfatin, apelin and adiponectin expression of varied degree was detected in 40/40, 40/40, 40/40, 40/40 and 39/40 pericoronary fat samples and in 37/40, 40/40, 39/40, 40/40 and 37/40 periaortic fat samples respectively. Differences in expression of adipokines were observed between pericoronary and periaortic adipose tissue; visfatin showed higher expression in pericoronary fat (P=0.001), as did apelin (P<0.001). Atherosclerosis was detected in 37/40 coronary arteries and 34/40 aortas. Coronary atherosclerosis was negatively correlated with pericoronary fat adiponectin expression (r=−0.496, P=0.001) and positively correlated with pericoronary fat chemerin (r=0.333, P=0.036) expression. Aortic atherosclerosis was negatively correlated with periaortic adiponectin expression (r=−0.701, P<0.001) and positively correlated with periaortic chemerin (r=0.824, P<0.001), vaspin (r=0.498, P=0.001) and visfatin (r=0.562, P<0.001) expression. Pericoronary fat vaspin and visfatin expression was not associated with the severity of coronary atherosclerotic lesions. Finally, periadventitial apelin expression was not associated with atherosclerosis at any site.

Conclusions: Our results lend support to the concept of differential expression of adipokines at distinct sites of adipose tissue. Moreover, periadventitial fat may affect vascular function through local adipokine production and, more interestingly, might differently affect the atherosclerotic process in different locations.

Declaration of interest: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest that could be perceived as prejudicing the impartiality of the research project.

Funding: This work was supported, however funding details unavailable.