Low plasma level of adiponectin is related to a higher risk of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease

Reyhane Ebrahimi,1,* Alireza bahiraee,2 Solaleh emamgholipour,3

1. Department of Clinical Biochemistry, School of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
2. Department of Medical Genetics, Faculty of Medicine, Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences, Bandar Abbas, Iran
3. Department of Clinical Biochemistry, School of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Introduction

There is an accumulating evidence that nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (nafld) is strongly linked to insulin resistance and obesity. it is also generally accepted that alteration in circulating adipokine levels especially adiponectin exerts a crucial role in pathomechanism of nafld and related disorders. here, we aimed to evaluate the plasma level of adiponectin in patients with nafld and nafld+ type 2 diabetes (t2d) compared with healthy subjects, and also to study its correlation with obesity indices.

Methods

A total of 102 subjects including 41 with nafld, 41 with nafld+t2d and 20 healthy people aged between 43 and 72 years, were recruited for the current study. all the patients were recently diagnosed and were recruited from the outpatient clinics of shariati hospital, tehran, iran. this study was approved by ethics committee of tehran university of medical sciences (tums). nafld diagnosis was based on the results from abdominal ultrasonography procedure. anthropometric indices of all participants including age, weight, height, bmi, waist circumference (wc), hip, waist-to-hip ratio (whr), and blood pressure were assessed. additionally, biochemical analyses were performed for all participants. finally, plasma level of adiponectin were determined by using the elisa kit.

Results

Plasma concentration of adiponectin was significantly lower in patients with nafld and ones with nafld+t2d compared with controls (p <0.05). analysis of covariance (ancova) was used to compare the plasma adiponectin among all the studied groups while adjusting for age and well-known obesity indices. our findings showed that the difference of circulating adiponectin levels between the controls and nafld patients and between the controls and nafld +t2d group disappeared after adjustment.

Conclusion

It has been suggested that a lower plasma level of adiponectin exposes a greater risk of developing nafld and nafld+t2d even in non-obese individuals. moreover, it is tempting to speculate that the use of plasma adiponectin level could be considered as an additional biomarker in the early diagnosis and monitoring of nafld.

Keywords

Adiponectin, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (nafld), obesity