Review Article Differential Effects of Leptin and Adiponectin in

Copyright © 2015 Raghu Adya et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Obesity is amajor health burdenwith an increased risk of cardiovascularmorbidity andmortality. Endothelial dysfunction is pivotal to the development of cardiovascular disease (CVD). In relation to this, adipose tissue secreted factors termed “adipokines ” have been reported to modulate endothelial dysfunction. In this review, we focus on two of the most abundant circulating adipokines, that is, leptin and adiponectin, in the development of endothelial dysfunction. Leptin has been documented to influence amultitude of organ systems, that is, central nervous system (appetite regulation, satiety factor) and cardiovascular system (endothelial dysfunction leading to atherosclerosis). Adiponectin, circulating at a much higher concentration, exists in different molecular weight forms, essentially made up of the collagenous fraction and a globular domain, the latter being investigated minimally for its involvement in proinflammatory processes including activation of NF