Evaluation of the inflammatory state in healthy obese and non-obese grouped according to body mass index and waist-hip ratio using procalcitonin and neopterin

Obesity has been defined as an excess amount of fat in the body and it is known that it is an independent risk factor by means of cardiovascular diseases. It is one of the important discussing health problems of today by means of risks produced by it and has an increasing rate of prevalence around the world, especially in developed countries. Many diseases such as, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, hyperuricemia, impaired fasting glucose, glucose intolerance and type 2 DM have an increased risk among obese patients. Generation of an inflammatory condition by obesity may be one of the reasons of increasing pathogenesis of these diseases.In this study we aimed to conduct a study on the overweight and normal weight subjects grouped according to BMI and WHR, to investigate the effects of overinflammation as a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, by comparing the levels of (hs-CRP), NP, and PCT.Sixty-seven healthy adults were included in this study who were classified according to body mass index (BMI) and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). Cases were divided into three groups according to BMI values; 21 normal weight (BMI ?25), 22 over-weighted (BMI 25-29,9) and 24 obese (BMI?30). Also, cases were divided into two groups according to their WHR values to determine central obesity (cut-off was 0.9). Among these groups, whether there were any differences on the levels of CRP, NP and PCT, which are inflammatory indicators have been investigated. While statistically significant differences (p<0.05) have been detected between CRP and PCT levels between the groups composed according to BMI, there was some difference among groups composed according to WHR values which was not statistically significant (p>0.05).It has been shown in this study that obesity can cause an inflammatory condition generally. However, it has been concluded that, this difference can be closely related to the degree of obesity more than the distribution of fat. More studies with expanded numbers of cases are needed to evaluate this situation.