Inflammatory markers are elevated in overweight Mexican-American children.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of the present study was to determine the effect of body weight on blood lipid profile, insulin resistance and inflammatory biomarkers in Mexican-American children. METHODS: Children (13.3+/-0.1 year) were recruited from a local school and assigned to one of three groups as a volunteer sample: healthy weight (HW) (> or =10th and <85th BMI percentile; n=42), at risk of overweight (RO) (> or =85th and <95th; n =25) or overweight (OW) (> or =95th; n=42). Plasma concentrations of hsCRP, sCD14, sIL-6R, sTNF-alphaR1, sTNF-alphaR2, IL-6 and TNF-alpha were determined by ELISA. RESULTS: OW children had significantly greater plasma concentrations of hsCRP (P =0.003), sCD14 (P =0.013), sIL-6R (P =0.010), sTNF-alphaR1 (P<0.001), sTNF-alphaR2 (P=0.005), insulin (P=0.001), TC:HDL ratio (P<0.001) and triglycerides (P <0.001) than HW children. Also plasma concentrations of hsCRP, sIL-6R and sTNF-alphaR1 were significantly greater in OW compared with RO children. CONCLUSION: Overweight Mexican-American children had a higher concentration of inflammatory biomarkers than healthy weight children. To our knowledge, this is the first study to report that sCD14 is elevated in overweight compared with healthy weight Mexican-American children.