1. ^*Department of Internal Medicine, Clinical Division of General Internal Medicine, Medical University Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria;
2. ^†Department of Clinical Nutrition, German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Nuthetal, Germany;
3. ^‡Department of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Nutrition, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany;
4. ^§Department of Surgery, Medical University Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria;
5. ^¶Department of Medicine, Academic Teaching Hospital, Hall, Austria.
6. These authors contributed equally to this work.

Correspondence: Christoph F. Ebenbichler Clinical Department of Internal Medicine, Clinical Division of General Internal Medicine, Medical University Innsbruck, Anichstrasse 35, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria. E-mail: Christoph.Ebenbichler@uibk.ac.at

^*The costs of publication of this article were defrayed, in part, by the payment of page charges. This article must, therefore, be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.

Received 21 June 2006; Revised  0000; Accepted 22 November 2006.

Abstract

Objective: Adiponectin is an adipocytokine secreted into circulation in three isoforms. The aim of the study was to investigate changes of adiponectin isoforms during profound weight loss and its relation to anthropomorphometric and metabolic parameters.

Research Methods and Procedures: Thirteen severely obese female subjects were examined before and 1 year after surgical treatment. Total adiponectin was determined by radioimmunosorbent assay, and oligomer composition was detected by nondenaturing Western blot.

Results: BMI decreased substantially (p < 0.001), which was associated with an increase of total adiponectin from 12.9 5.9 to 14.3 6.1 g/mL (p = 0.055). Medium molecular weight (MMW) adiponectin increased from 7.5 3.6 to 9.1 4.1 g/mL (p = 0.009), whereas high (HMW) and low molecular weight adiponectin remained unchanged. values of total adiponectin correlated significantly with values of anthropometric parameters. Similar correlations were found for values of MMW ( weight: r² = 0.4132, p = 0.0178; BMI: r² = 0.3319, p = 0.0393; fat mass: r² = 0.5202, p = 0.0054).

Discussion: Thus, profound weight loss was associated with an increase in total adiponectin, which was mainly and consistently caused by increases in MMW adiponectin (p = 0.009). These changes result in a shift from low molecular weight to MMW and HMW adiponectin isoforms, which may be related to improvements in both anthropometric and metabolic parameters.