Comparing 2 groups, I found significantly lower values of TNF and IL-6 in a group of obese children and adolescents in the control group. How can I explain this?
In obese chidren and adults the most common elevated cytokines are the IL-6 and the TNF. I can´t find any plausibleexplanation for the reverse results.
Hi Luis,
It is an emerging notion that adipose tissue in otherwise normal control people is a metabolic and immune regulatory tissue. In obese and less so in overweight people, adipose tissue has many of the features of a chronic-inflammatory organ with DM-type 2, circulating pro-inflammatory cytokines and phase reactants skewed upward with/without rheumatic symptoms. Indeed, that fat tissue looks like a chronic synovitis. Hence, given the current world-wide obesity epidemic, the diagnosis of «mild sero-negative RA» has increased and, many of those people have been improved by fasting or hypocaloric diets and/or DMARDs.
Most rheumatologists have removed «sero-negative lupus» from their vocabulary. I suggest we also drop «sero-negative RA». The published clinical and epidemiological studies of RA, using the 2010 RA criteria, should be interpreted with caution (if including many obese people) and be clinically «decontaminated» using the prisms of BMI (abnormal acute phase reactant or positive confounder) and serology (missing auto-Ab or negative confounder).
So, if your normal controls have more cytokines than your obese children and ados, that is likely due to a local factor in your study. If it is the other way around, that is expected and mainstream scientific information.
Hope those comments helped. Best! HM.
Yes Henri, it was lower in the obese and ados group compared with control.
Thanks for the help.
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