Abstract
The aim of this study was to characterize expression profiles of visceral and subcutaneous adipose tissue in children. Adipose tissue samples were collected from children having elective surgery (n = 71, [54 boys], 6.0 ± 4.3 years). Affymetrix microarrays (n = 20) were performed to characterize the functional profile and identify genes of interest in adipose tissue. Visceral adipose tissue had an overrepresentation of Gene Ontology themes related to immune and inflammatory responses and subcutaneous adipose tissue had an overrepresentation of themes related to adipocyte growth and development. Likewise, qPCR performed in the whole cohort showed a 30-fold increase in haptoglobin (P = 0.005), 7-fold increase in IL-10 (P < 0.001), 8-fold decrease in VEGF (P = 0.01) and a 28-fold decrease in TBOX15 (P < 0.001) in visceral compared to subcutaneous adipose tissue. The inflammatory pattern in visceral adipose tissue may represent an early stage of the adverse effects of this depot, and combined with chronic obesity, may contribute to increased metabolic and cardiovascular risk.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to gratefully acknowledge all the patients that participated in this study, the surgeons and anaesthetists in the Department of Surgery and Anaesthesia at The Children's Hospital at Westmead and Drs Roy and Tony Brancatisano at the Institute of Weight Control for their assistance with sample collection, the Department of Histopathology at The Children's Hospital at Westmead for their assistance with sample preparation and Dr Eric Ravussin for critical reading of the manuscript.
Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.