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  • Original Article
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Carbohydrates, glycemic index and diabetes mellitus

The association between inflammatory biomarkers and metabolically healthy obesity depends of the definition used

Abstract

Background/Objectives:

To assess the distribution of interleukin (IL)-1β, IL-6, tumour necrosis factor (TNF)-α and C-reactive protein (CRP) according to the different definitions of metabolically healthy obesity (MHO).

Subjects/Methods:

A total of 881 obese (body mass index (BMI) 30 kg/m2) subjects derived from the population-based CoLaus Study participated in this study. MHO was defined using six sets of criteria including different combinations of waist, blood pressure, total high-density lipoprotein cholesterol or low-density lipoprotein –cholesterol, triglycerides, fasting glucose, homeostasis model, high-sensitivity CRP, and personal history of cardiovascular, respiratory or metabolic diseases. IL-1β, IL-6 and TNF-α were assessed by multiplexed flow cytometric assay. CRP was assessed by immunoassay.

Results:

On bivariate analysis some, but not all, definitions of MHO led to significantly lower levels of IL-6, TNF-α and CRP compared with non-MH obese subjects. Most of these differences became nonsignificant after multivariate analysis. An posteriori analysis showed a statistical power between 9 and 79%, depending on the inflammatory biomarker and MHO definition considered. Further increasing sample size to overweight+obese individuals (BMI25 kg/m2, n=2917) showed metabolically healthy status to be significantly associated with lower levels of CRP, while no association was found for IL-1β. Significantly lower IL-6 and TNF-α levels were also found with some but not all MHO definitions, the differences in IL-6 becoming nonsignificant after adjusting for abdominal obesity or percent body fat.

Conclusions:

MHO individuals present with decreased levels of CRP and, depending on MHO definition, also with decreased levels in IL-6 and TNF-α. Conversely, no association with IL-1β levels was found.

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Acknowledgements

The CoLaus Study was supported by research grants from GlaxoSmithKline, the Faculty of Biology and Medicine of Lausanne, Switzerland, and the Fonds National Suisse de la recherche (Grant no: 33CSCO-122661). We would like to express our gratitude to the participants in the Lausanne CoLaus Study and to the investigators who have contributed to the recruitment, in particular Yolande Barreau, Anne-Lise Bastian, Binasa Ramic, Martine Moranville, Martine Baumer, Marcy Sagette, Jeanne Ecoffey and Sylvie Mermoud for data collection.

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Correspondence to P Marques-Vidal.

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Competing interests

DW is a full-time employee of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), a pharmaceutical company. PV and GW received an unrestricted grant from GSK to build the CoLaus Study. The other authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Supplementary Information accompanies the paper on European Journal of Clinical Nutrition website

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Marques-Vidal, P., Velho, S., Waterworth, D. et al. The association between inflammatory biomarkers and metabolically healthy obesity depends of the definition used. Eur J Clin Nutr 66, 426–435 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/ejcn.2011.170

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