Normal-weight central obesity is associated with metabolic disorders in Chinese postmenopausal women.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: This cross-sectional study examined whether normal-weight central obesity, defined as a high waist-to-height ratio (WHtR), is associated with metabolic disorders in Chinese postmenopausal women. METHODS AND STUDY DESIGN: We recruited 634 community-dwelling postmenopausal women with a normal body mass index (BMI) who participated in an annual health checkup. Normal-weight obesity (NWO) was defined as a normal BMI and WHtR in the highest tertile of the study population. The updated National Cholesterol Education Program/Adult Treatment Panel III criteria were used to assess metabolic abnormalities, and binary logistic regression models were employed to estimate the associations between NWO and metabolic disorders. RESULTS: The prevalence of each metabolic disorder showed a graded increase (p<0.05) across the WHtR tertiles in the study population. NWO was significantly associated with some non-adipose components of metabolic syndrome (MetS) (p<0.05) after adjusting for age, smoking status, drinking status, inflammatory markers, total cholesterol (TC), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-c), body fat percentage (BF%), and the remaining non-adipose MetS components. Participants in the highest WHtR tertile had a higher odds ratio [2.00 (1.19- 3.33), p<0.01] for the presence of at least two non-adipose MetS components than those in the lowest tertile after adjusting for age, lifestyle factors, inflammatory markers, TC, LDL-c, and BF%. CONCLUSIONS: NWO is significantly associated with metabolic disorders, suggesting that a clinical assessment of abdominal obesity indices should be conducted in postmenopausal women, even in those with a normal BMI.

Visceral Adiposity Index Is Associated with Pre-Diabetes and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in Chinese Adults Aged 20-50.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Diabetes mellitus and pre-diabetes are closely associated with visceral obesity. Visceral adiposity index (VAI) is a novel sex-specific index, indirectly expressing visceral adipose function. Our aim was to determine the associations of VAI with dysglycemia (the combination of diabetes and pre-diabetes) and to compare the predictive ability for dysglycemia between VAI and traditional obesity indices. METHODS: We performed a cross-sectional analysis of the data of 2,754 Chinese community-dwelling people who participated in the health checkup. Sex-specific VAI tertile cut-off points were used as follows: 1.70, 2.77 in males and 0.98, 1.75 in females. Binary logistic regression models were performed to estimate the association of the higher values of all the obesity indices with pre-diabetes and diabetes. The area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was applied to compare the predictive potential for dysglycemia among the obesity indices. RESULTS: VAI was the only index significantly associated with both pre-diabetes and diabetes in both sexes after adjusting for potential confounders. The results of ROC analysis and AUC showed that VAI possessed the largest AUC, followed by other obesity indices. CONCLUSIONS: Higher VAI values are positively associated with the presence of pre-diabetes and diabetes in Chinese adults.

Identification of a new broad-spectrum CD8+ T cell epitope from over-expressed antigen COX-2 in esophageal carcinoma.

Cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) has been found to be over-expressed in esophageal carcinoma (EC) and it could be considered as a potential tumor-associated antigen (TAA). In the present study, six candidate peptides from COX-2 were firstly predicted and synthesized. Among them, P(479) had the highest affinity and stability toward both HLA-A *0201 and HLA-A *03 molecules and it could significantly promote the IFN-gamma release. The cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) induced by P(479) could specifically lyse COX-2-expressed EC cell lines, EC-1 (HLA-A3 supertype) and EC-9706 (HLA-A2 supertype). These results suggested that P(479) as a novel broad-spectrum T cell epitope would be very useful in immunotherapy against esophageal carcinoma.