News & Blog
Insulin resistance and adiponectin
Wednesday 21st September 2016
Adiponectin is one of the "bioactive molecules" which is released by adipose tissue, its role is in the regulation of glucose and lipids. [Aleidi et al. 2015]
It is known that obesity often accompanies insulin resistance and so initial studies looked at secretory proteins related to adipose tissue in order to understand further the links between central obesity and problems such as insulin resistance. The study by Arita et al.[1999] found that the mean "plasma concentration of adiponectin in non obese subjects was 8.9 ±5.4 mg/ml, whereas the mean in obese subjects was much lower at 3.7± 3.2 mg/ml. A strong negative correlation was observed between plasma adiponectin levels and body mass indices (BMIs) in both men and women".
Early research [Hotta et al. 2001] on rhesus monkeys built on the findings that increased BMI is linked with low levels of adiponectin by showing that "the change in plasma levels of adiponectin was similar to the change in insulin sensitivity".
Earlier this year a study by Jiang et al. [2016] looked into the potential of using adiponectin levels to predict the risk of pre-diabetes and diabetes in those who are at high risk of developing the disease, in this case those who had a parent with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Of the nearly 400 participants in the study 1/3 developed pre-diabetes or diabetes during the 5.5 yrs of follow up, and baseline adiponectin levels were lower in participants who progressed than those who remained non diabetic. This finding was found to be "consistent across gender and ethnicity". "A 5μg/ml higher baseline adiponectin level was associated with approximately 40% lower rate of progression to pre-diabetes".
To conclude, low levels of adiponectin are related to increased insulin resistance and so diabetic patients have lower adiponectin levels than non diabetics. This finding demonstrates that Adiponectin human ELISA could have a useful role in providing more research into the link between adiponectin levels and metabolic conditions, and also could potentially be used to predict those who are likely to become diabetic in the future.
References
Aleidi, S. et al. 2015. Adiponectin serum levels correlate with insulin resistance in type 2 diabetic patients. Saudi Pharmaceutical Journal [Online] 23. Available at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ articles/PMC4475813/ [Accessed: 14th July 2016].
Arita, Y. et al. 1999. Paradoxical Decrease of an Adipose-Specific Protein, Adiponectin, in Obesity. Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications [Online]257. Available at http:// www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006291X99902553 [Accessed: 14th July 2016].
Hotta, K. et al. 2001. Circulating Concentrations of the Adipocyte Protein Adiponectin Are Decreased in Parallel With Reduced Insulin Sensitivity During the Progression to Type 2 Diabetes in Rhesus Monkeys. Diabetes [Online]65. Available at http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/ 50/5/1126 [Accessed: 14th July 2016].
Jiang, Y. et al. 2016. Adiponectin levels predict prediabetes risk: the Pathobiology of Prediabetes in A Biracial Cohort (POP-ABC) study. BMJ Open Diabetes Research & Care [Online]4. Available at http://drc.bmj.com/content/4/1/e000194.full [Accessed: 14th July 2016].