Original Research as Short Communications Influence of Metabolic Syndrome on Biomarkers of Oxidative Stress and Inflammation in Obese Adults

syndrome on biomarkers of oxidative stress and inflammation in obese adults. Obesity. 2006;14:2127–2131. Objective: Both obesity and the metabolic syndrome (MetS) have been independently linked with increased oxidative and inflammatory stress. This study tested the hypothesis that obesity with MetS is associated with greater oxidative and inflammatory burden compared with obesity alone. Research Methods and Procedures: Forty-eight normal-weight and 40 obese (20 without MetS; 20 with MetS) adults were studied. MetS was defined according to Na-tional Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III criteria. Plasma concentrations of oxidized low-density lipoprotein, C-reactive protein, tumor necrosis fac-tor-, interleukin (IL)-6, and IL-18 were determined by enzyme immunoassay. Results: Plasma biomarkers of oxidative stress and inflam-mation were lowest in normal-weight controls. Of note, obese MetS adults demonstrated significantly higher plasma concentrations of oxidized low-density lipoprotein (62.3 3.2 vs. 54.0 4.0 U/L; p 0.05), C-reactive protein (3.0 0.6 vs. 1.5 0.3 mg/L; p 0.01), tumor necrosis factor- (2.1 0.1 vs. 1.6 0.1 pg/mL; p 0.05), IL-6 (2.8 0.4 vs. 1.4 0.2 pg/mL; p 0.01), and IL-18 (253 16 vs. 199 16 pg/mL; p 0.01), compared with obese adults without MetS. Discussion: These results suggest that MetS heightens ox-idative stress and inflammatory burden in obese adults. Increased oxidative and inflammatory stress may contribute to the greater risk of coronary heart disease and cerebrovas-cular disease in obese adults with MetS. Key words: metabolic syndrome, oxidative stress, in-flammatio