Single-nucleotide polymorphisms in adiponectin, AdipoR1, and AdipoR2 genes: insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes mellitus candidate genes.

It has already been a decade and a half since the discovery of adiponectin and its role as an insulin sensitizer and only 7 years since its receptors, AdipoR1 and AdipoR2, were described. A single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) is a DNA sequence variation that affects only one nucleotide; it may vary from one population to another with different predisposing factors to diseases and other ailments. Once some of the effects of adiponectin and its receptors were known, it was not long until an effort was made to find the associations between specific SNPs of the genes of this hormone and its receptors as genetic risk factors for insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and metabolic syndrome, although these genes were investigated as possible candidates related to the development of these metabolic disorders. All of these possible associations were studied in different populations from France, Finland, the United Kingdom, North America, and Japan, showing hardly concluding results, and because of that it is highly controversial to directly associate one of the genes mentioned above to insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and metabolic syndrome. All of these inconsistencies lead to a review that summarizes the SNPs of the genes of adiponectin, AdipoR1, and AdipoR2 that are mostly related to insulin resistance syndrome, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and metabolic syndrome, although presenting the possible factors that should be taken into account to homogenize the results obtained until now.

Epidemiologic behavior of obesity in the Maracaibo City metabolic syndrome prevalence study.

INTRODUCTION: Obesity is a worldwide public health issue. Since the epidemiological behaviour of this disease is not well established in our country, the purpose of this study was to determinate its prevalence in the Maracaibo City, Zulia State- Venezuela. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A cross-sectional study was undertaken using the data set from the Maracaibo City Metabolic Syndrome Prevalence Study. The sample consists of 2108 individuals from both genders and randomly selected: 1119 (53.09%) women and 989 (46.91%) men. The participants were interrogated for a complete clinical history and anthropometric measurements. To classify obesity, the WHO criteria for Body Mass Index (BMI), and Waist Circumference (WC) from the IDF/NHLBI/AHA/WHF/IAS/IASO-2009 (IDF-2009) and ATPIII statements were applied. RESULTS: For BMI, obesity had an overall prevalence of 33.3% (n = 701), and according to gender women had 32.4% (n = 363) and men had 34.2% (n = 338). Overweight had a prevalence of 34.8% (n = 733), Normal weight had 29.8% (n = 629), and Underweight had 2.1% (n = 45). Adding Obesity and Overweight results, the prevalence of elevated BMI (>25 Kg/m(2)) was 68.1%. Using the IDF-2009 WC's cut-off, Obesity had 74.2% prevalence, compared to 51.7% using the ATPIII parameters. CONCLUSIONS: These results show a high prevalence of abdominal obesity in our locality defined by the WHO, IDF-2009 and ATPIII criteria, which were not designed for Latin-American populations. We suggest further investigation to estimate the proper values according to ethnicity, genetic background and sociocultural aspects.