Immune and Inflammatory Signaling Pathways in Exercise and Obesity

Abstract

Over the last decades the combination of both a sedentary lifestyle and excessive food availability has led to a significant increase in the prevalence of obesity, which is increasingly recognized as an important risk factor for type 2 diabetes. Several lines of evidence exist demonstrating that expanded visceral adipose tissue produces several pro-inflammatory mediators that activate signaling pathways that contribute to the development of insulin resistance. Exercise training is an important lifestyle factor that is widely used as a tool for preventing and improving lifestyle-related obesity and insulin resistance. In this regard, exercise training is useful to increase energy expenditure thereby counteracting a positive energy balance. Exercise training is also able to attenuate the activation of several obesity-induced pathways of inflammation and oxidative stress. Thus, a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms and immune pathways in exercise, obesity, and diabetes can be extremely useful to exploit optimized lifestyle strategies to combat the increasing incidence of metabolic diseases.

Keywords: adipocytes; cytokines; fat tissue; insulin sensitivity; physical activity.