Active clinical trials for "Metabolic Syndrome"

The purpose of the study is to determine the role of beta-cell function and insulin resistance in the development of impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) and type 2 diabetes in children and adolescents who have an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes due to overweight/obesity or a family history of overweight/obesity, diabetes and/or impaired fasting glucose. It is hypothesized that: 1)Obese adolescents with IGT will be more insulin resistant than obese adolescents with NGT. Insulin resistance will be the best predictor of changes in glucose tolerance status., 2)Beta cell function will be impaired in obese adolescents with IGT compared to obese adolescents with NGT., 3)Obese adolescents with IGT will present with greater intramyocellular, intrahepatic and visceral fat than obese adolescents with NGT. Furthermore, obese adolescents with IGT will have larger adipocytes, while having significantly fewer adipocytes compared to obese adolescents with NGT. Obese adolescents with IGT will also have altered expression of key genes related to insulin resistance., and 4)Abnormalities in endothelial function as manifested by low FMD and PAT are already present in obese adolescents with IGT and are linked to insulin resistance.

NAFLD is a spectrum of liver diseases associated with varying degrees of hepatic steatosis, inflammation, and in some cases, fibrosis. NAFLD is a common observation in all demographics, but the prevalence of NAFLD and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is especially high in the morbidly obese population. Leptin is a cytokine that is encoded by the ob gene and primarily secreted by adipose tissue. The production of serum leptin increases with progressive obesity. Because of this observation, there has been significant interest in potential role of leptin in NAFLD. Our hypothesis is that we will find increased hepatic leptin and leptin receptor expression as the degree of hepatic injury worsens in NAFLD.

The aim of the study, is to assess the prevalence of Metabolic Syndrome in Italy on a regional basis, defined according to NCEP/ATPIII Guidelines criteria.

The theme of this Morehouse-Emory Partnership Program focuses on elucidating the etiologic basis of ethnic differences in obesity-related CVD and discovering new intervention strategies to ameliorate CV health in all communities. The proposed Program uses a multi-disciplinary strategy to systematically characterize ethnic differences in obesity-related CVD by drawing upon the fields of physiology, psychology, biochemistry, vascular biology, public health, nursing and clinical medicine.

Diabetic patients have an excess risk of mortality due to cardiovascular diseases (CVD) compared to non-diabetics. Cardiovascular disease mortality rate is reportedly on the rise in several countries in the region, including urban China, Malaysia, Korea and Taiwan. Cardiovascular diseases and stroke are always the number 2 and 3 killers for Taiwanese population in recent years, and they really cost much from our medical resource. For treating dyslipidemia, one of the major risk factor for CVD, statins have been well documented to reduce CV deaths both for primary and secondary prevention in several large-scale trials. It has been reported that the clinical benefits of treating dyslipidemia in patients with diabetes mellitus should be at least equivalent to the benefits observed among those with cardiovascular disease. A meta-analysis of seven trials of statins found that treatment for about 5 years resulted in a 25% reduction in the combined outcome of coronary heart disease death and non-fatal myocardial infarction. Fibrates are another group of hypolipidemic drugs that regulate lipid metabolism and are used quite often in daily practice for diabetic dyslipidemia, because of its beneficial effect to reduce high TG and increase low HDL-C, which are the characteristic lipid abnormalities commonly seen in the patients with diabetes or metabolic syndrome. However, in recently published FIELD study, fenofibrate did not significantly reduce the risk of the primary outcome of coronary events in 9,795 participants with type 2 diabetes mellitus. The higher rate of starting statin therapy in patients allocated placebo might have masked a moderately larger treatment benefit. Furthermore, all the treatment trials to back up the lipid treatment guideline were conducted in Caucasians and no data about the combination therapy with fibrate and statin was published before.

The overall goal of this study is to determine whether variations in the perilipin, and several other, genes would be a useful tool for physicians who are caring for morbidly obese patients to guide therapy. The main hypotheses to be tested is that sequence variations (polymorphisms) in the perilipin gene and several other obesity-related genes are associated with resistance to weight loss for obese individuals on energy restricted diets, potentially playing a role in the development of obesity related complications.

The purpose of this study is to determine if the metabolic syndrome is a risk factor for cognitive decline and if this association is modified by inflammation.

Metabolic syndrome is commonly defined as a set of risk factors and abnormalities that markedly increase the risk of cardiovascular events. Its relevance has been confirmed by a recent population-based survey of subjects aged 40-79 years indicating that the prevalence of metabolic syndrome in Italy is 34.1% if diagnosed using WHO criteria and 17.8% if diagnosed using the NCEP-ATPIII criteria. On the basis of the above considerations, the aim of this study is to promote the use of the SCORE algorithm for estimating cardiovascular risk, and to evaluate its evolution in patients with metabolic syndrome after the implementation of a multifactorial preventive strategy, with particular reference to the correction of lifestyle, hypertension and dyslipidemia.

The Pediatric Metabolic Syndrome Study is an observational study being conducted at the Medical University of South Carolina to investigate cardiometabolic risk parameters in obese subjects ages 4 to 21. A detailed assessment is performed on eligible subjects including fasting labwork, anthropometrics, nutrition analysis, body composition testing, echocardiography, and carotid IMT measurements.

Adipose tissue is strongly correlated to obesity and diabetes which are two major problems in the worldwide. Adipose tissue is involved in modulating glucose and energy metabolism locally and systemically by secreting factors, called adipocytokines. Tetranectin (TN), a novel adipocytokine, is secreted by adipose tissues. TN may regulate the glucose/energy homeostasis to affect lipid accumulation.The role of TN in adipocytes with or without TN on regulation of adipose tissue growth and lipid metabolism is valuable to be studied. Materials and methods: Secreted proteins from human adipocyte culture medium were deciphered using 2-D polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and determined by LC/MS with MALDI-TOF analysis of proteins. Adipose tissues were obtained from the breast of 15 women undergoing mastectomy. Serum samples from 200 normal healthy people and 54 breast cancer patients were assigned to either a lean or obese group according to the body mass index. The TN protein concentration was measured in the culture medium of stromal-vascular fraction (SVF)-derived adipocytes from healthy humans, breast cancer patients, pigs and also from 3T3-L1 cells. Associations between plasma TN and other biomarkers were assessed with Pearson's correlations and multivariable linear regression.