Evaluation of serum netrin-1 levels in obese subjects

Obesity is defined by the World Health Organization as "an increase in adipose tissue to such an extent that it has adverse health consequences". Obesity is one of the most common health problems in modern societies. It is a preventable public health problem that has reached epidemic proportions and is increasing in frequency in developed and developing countries and in our country. Netrins are important precursor proteins for neural and vascular development. Netrin-1 has an important role in various physiological processes such as cell injury, proliferation and migration. In this study, it was aimed to investigate the relationship between serum netrin-1 levels and biochemical parameters in obese individuals. In our study, serum samples were collected from a total of 45 volunteers, 15 of whom were obese and 30 were healthy controls. Serum netrin-1 levels were determined by ELISA method with a commercial kit. Clinical and biochemical laboratory parameters were evaluated. Spearman correlation analyzes were performed to examine the relationship between serum netrin-1 levels and biochemical parameters. Serum netrin-1 levels were observed to be significantly lower in obese individuals compared to healthy controls. The median value was 844.0 pg/mL in the control group and 338 pg/mL in the obese group (p<0.0001). Serum netrin-1 levels were significantly negatively correlated with HbA1c, LDL, Cholesterol and Triglyceride (P < 0.01). In addition, ROC analysis showed that serum netrin-1 levels could identify the presence of obesity with an area under the ROC curve (AUC) value of 0.8667 (95% Cl=0.7249-1.000; P<0.0001). Our results show that decreased serum netrin-1 levels are significantly associated with the presence of obesity.