Preliminary reportHigher levels of adiponectin in American than in Japanese men despite obesity
Introduction
Adiponectin is a plasma protein secreted by adipose tissue [1]. The levels of adiponectin are known to be reduced in obesity [2].
We previously reported that, comparing American and Japanese men aged 40 to 49 years, American men had a more favorable profile regarding many risk factors, including blood pressure, total and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, fasting glucose, and cigarette smoking, in spite of their higher prevalence of coronary calcification [3]. A notable exception was much higher levels of obesity in the American men [3]. Because, on average, American men are more obese than Japanese men, we expected that their levels of adiponectin would be lower, which would partly contribute to being more atherosclerotic as demonstrated by the higher prevalence of coronary calcification. We compared the levels of adiponectin across populations using stored blood samples.
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Participants and methods
Study design and methods have been described in detail elsewhere [3]. Briefly, participants were 190 men aged 40 to 49 years without diabetes or coronary heart disease (98 volunteer American men [whites, 99%) from Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and 92 Japanese men, randomly selected from Kusatsu, Japan). The study protocol was approved by the institutional review boards of University of Pittsburgh, PA, and Shiga University of Medical Science, Japan. Venous blood samples were drawn after a
Results and discussion
Contrary to our expectation, the levels of adiponectin were substantially higher in the American than in the Japanese men (13.3 ± 5.8 vs 7.3 ± 4.2 μg/mL, respectively, P < .001). As a post hoc analysis, we did (1) waist circumference stratification and (2) regression analyses. We first divided the participants into tertile groups of waist circumference. The levels of adiponectin were higher in the American men across all waist circumference tertile groups (Table 1). In the regression analyses,
Acknowledgment
This research was supported by grant-in-aid from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, (A):13307016 and (B):16790335; grant-in-aid from the National Institutes of Health (R01HL86200); and beginning grant-in-aid from the American Heart Association (060512U).
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