Endocrine Abstracts

Low plasma SHBG levels are present in patients suffering chronic metabolic diseases, including obesity and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). In overweight individuals, low plasma SHBG levels are a biomarker for the metabolic syndrome and predict a higher risk of suffering type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Our recent results demonstrate that SHBG is more than sex hormone carrier and its reduction in obese subjects play an active role in obesity and NAFLD deve...

Introduction: Waist circumference is a validated tool to measure obesity-associated cardiovascular risk factor. However it does not differentiate between superficial and visceral abdominal fat. Ultrasonography has many advantages over TC/DEXA in abdominal fat assessment, specially imaging pre-peritoneal, omental and retroperitoneal fat. Our aims were to validate the diagnostic technique and to observe correlations between different abdominal fat layers with clinical and analyt...

Background: Branched-chain amino acids (BCAA) are elevated in morbid obesity and decreases significantly following bariatric surgery. This decrease is associated with the post-surgical improvement in insulin resistance (IR) and may be secondary to the reduction in BCAA flux from proteolysis or an increase in BCAA catabolism. Presently, the underlying mechanism is unclear.Aim: To investigate the changes in BCAA metabolism in morbidly obese individuals fol...

Introduction: Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are submicron vesicles released by most cells. They contain protein, enzymes and microRNA of the donor cells and are believed to play a role in paracrine communication. Circulating EVs might reflect heightened immune/inflammatory status in obese individuals and play a role in initiation/modulation of chronic low grade inflammation associated with obesity.Aims: To compare circulating plasma EVs between healthy vo...

Introduction: Obesity and its comorbidities, specially type 2 diabetes (T2D), are a major public health problem. The disappointing result of dietary treatment and the scarce of drugs have led to increased bariatric surgery (BS) as the most efficient therapeutic option. However, not all obese patients with T2D who undergo BS achieve diabetes remission.Objective: To develop a genetic scoring system for predicting T2D remission following BS. 2) To compare o...

Introduction: Obesity is a chronic condition with great morbidity, mortality and significant economic and psychosocial impact. Bariatric surgery has proven to be an effective therapy for sustained weight loss and has allowed a reduction in medical comorbidity and an improvement in self-esteem and life quality. However, recent evidence reports an increase in eating and substance-related disorders that are diagnosed in the postoperative period worsening the prognosis.<p clas...

We aimed to assess the effect of sleeve gastrectomy (SG) on the metabolic and gut microbiota profiles in non-diabetic obese patients with different grade of insulin resistance (IR).Methods: Prospective study of 22 morbid non-diabetic obese patients (77.2% women, age 47.13±9.51 years, basal BMI 45.59±4.99 kg/m2, 11 IR and 11 non-IR) undergoing SG. A fasting blood sample was collected at baseline and at 6 months post-SG for the determi...

Introduction: p53 is a transcription factor involved in many biological functions such as stress, ageing, and metabolism. Although there is a large body of evidence showing that p53 promotes fatty acid catabolism while it inhibits anabolism through the regulation of gene expression, the possible contribution of p53 to the pathogenesis of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) remains to be elucidated. Also, the anthracycline doxorubicin is an important chemotherapeutic agent...

Obesity, a multifactorial chronic endocrine-metabolic disease, represents one of the most serious and complex global health threats, as it is commonly associated with multiple and severe comorbidities (e.g. diabetes type-2). Indeed, as a source of severe metabolic-dysregulation, obesity alters physiological, homeostatic gene expression patters in multiple metabolic-tissues, including the central metabolic hub, i.e. the liver. However, the precise molecular mechanisms underlyin...

Background and objective: Adipose tissue where energy homeostasis is regulated is now considered an endocrine organ. miRNAs may contribute to the regulation of energy balance and metabolic homeostasis, by controlling a wide range of metabolic pathways. miR-143 and miR-34a are the best studied among the miRNAs linked to adipose tissue regulation. Dietary intake, among many other environmental factors, is a key player that can induce epigenetic changes. The aim of the study was ...

Recent studies suggest that adult humans have active brown or beige adipocytes, the activation of which might be a therapeutic strategy for the treatment of metabolic diseases. Treatment of CL-316243, a β3-adrenergic receptor agonist, activates brown/beige adipocytes and can cause significant reductions in adiposity. Many transcriptional pathways regulating brown/beige adipose tissue have been identified, the role of lipid biosynthetic enzymes in brown/beige adipose tissu...

Background: Therapeutic activation of thermogenic brown adipose tissue (BAT) is a potential strategy to prevent obesity and metabolic disease in humans. However, it is now recognised that rodent studies examining BAT physiology are carried out at sub-thermoneutral temperatures (e.g. ~20°C), and are not translationally relevant to humans as BAT is ‘hyperactive’. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the effect of common regulators of BAT metabolism wh...

Background: Humans and other mammals need to maintain a stable core body temperature. Energy expenditure increases in response to a mild cold stimulus, this is called cold induced thermogenesis (CIT). Recently, thermogenic brown adipose tissue (BAT) has been found to play an important role for CIT in human adults. It is known that energy expenditure and CIT are acutely influenced by ambient temperature. In the present study, we investigated the effect of seasonal temperature v...