Association of body fat distribution with proinflammatory gene expression in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from young adult subjects

Abstract

Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) measurements have proved useful in recent studies to discern peripheral biomarkers for common complex diseases and for understanding host responses to drugs and nutrition in personalized medicine. Despite the initial promising data from PBMC, there is little information, however, on inflammatory and immune gene regulation in the context of body fat distribution and metabolic features in healthy adults. We investigated the putative association of body fat distribution and related-metabolic features with mRNA levels of proinflammatory markers in PBMC. This study enrolled 136 healthy subjects (85 females/51 males; age: 21.5 +/- 2.5 years). Anthropometrical, clinical, metabolic, and proinflammatory variables were assessed with validated tools. Interestingly, in normal-weight subjects with lower truncal fat (TF) values, mRNA levels of ICAM1, IL1R1, IL6, and TNF-alpha in PBMC were lower (p < 0.05), compared to normal-weight individuals with higher TF (>58.5/50.2% for men/women, respectively) and overweight/obese subjects [body mass index (BMI) >25 kg/m(2)]. After regression analyses were performed, individuals with the highest tertiles of TF and waist circumference displayed higher mRNA gene expressions as well as circulating proinflammatory (C-reactive protein and IL6) and metabolic (blood pressure, HOMA-IR, and LDL-c:HDL-c ratio) variables values (p < 0.05), independent from gender. Our findings collectively suggest that the mRNA expression of certain proinflammatory markers in PBMC is associated with body fat distribution in healthy adult subjects, which in turn, was also related to metabolic features and plasma proinflammatory markers concentrations.