Adipokines and Obesity. Potential Link to Metabolic Disorders and Chronic Complications.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has recognized obesity as one of the top ten threats to human health. It is estimated that the number of obese and overweight people worldwide exceeds the number of those who are undernourished. Obesity is not only a state of abnormally increased adipose tissue in the body, but also of increased release of biologically active adipokines. Adipokines released into the circulating blood, due to their specific receptors on the surface of target cells, act as classic hormones affecting the metabolism of tissues and organs. What is more, adipokines and cytokines may decrease the insulin sensitivity of tissues and induce inflammation and development of chronic complications. Certainly, it can be stated that in an era of a global obesity pandemic, adipokines may gain more and more importance as regards their use in the diagnostic evaluation and treatment of diseases. An extensive search for materials on the role of white, brown and perivascular fatty tissue and obesity-related metabolic and chronic complications was conducted online using PubMed, the Cochrane database and Embase.

The cut-off value for interleukin 34 as an additional potential inflammatory biomarker for the prediction of the risk of diabetic complications.

In the present study, we have decided to evaluate whether serum interleukin 34 (IL-34) levels may have diagnostic value in predicting the risk of vascular diabetic complications. The study included 49 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and 23 high-risk group. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis has shown that IL-34 has more discriminatory power than C-reactive protein (CRP) for the risk of diabetic complications. The cut-off value for IL-34 was established as 91.2 pg/mL. The gist of our research was identification of IL-34 as an additional potential inflammatory biomarker for the prediction of the risk of vascular diabetic complications.