Obesity and Asthma: Adiponectin Receptor 1 (Adipo R1) and Adiponectin Receptor 2 (Adipo R2) are expressed by normal human bronchial epithelial (NHBE) cells at air-liquid interface (ALI) and expression changes with IL-13 stimulation

Obesity is recognized as an important risk factor for the development of many chronic diseases such as hypertension, Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) cardiovascular disease, cancer, renal disease, neurologic dysfunction, metabolic syndrome and asthma (3, 4). Circulating serum adiponectin levels in obese asthmatics have been reported to be low. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the role of adiponectin in a mucus hypersecretion model and hypothesized that adiponectin would decrease IL-13 induced MUC5AC expression from differentiated NHBE cells and that increasing concentrations of IL-13 would cause a decrease in Adipo R1 and Adipo R2 expression. MUC5AC expression with exposure to adiponectin was not significant. However, mRNA expression of Adipo R1 and Adipo R2 was significantly decreased by stimulation of IL-13 for acute (24 hours) and chronic (14 days) exposure. Therefore, the obese state and specifically IL-13 concentration could play a role in Adipo R1 and Adipo R2 expression within NHBE cells