Chronic Inflammation May Predict Why Black Women More Prone To Heart Disease

MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Carmen De Miguel, PhD | Postdoctoral Scholar
Section of Cardio-Renal Physiology and Medicine
Department of Medicine | Division of Nephrology
UAB | The University of Alabama at Birmingham

Medical Research: What is the background for this study?

Dr. De Miguel: It is known that obesity is a major risk for cardiovascular disease and that cardiovascular disease is more prevalent in the African American population. Specifically, female African Americans have an exceptionally high risk of developing cardiovascular disease. Obesity is known to contribute to the development of diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, etc. All these diseases have in common persistent low-grade inflammation, and we also know that signs of inflammation can be observed in patients with cardiovascular disease years before the disease is diagnosed. A better understanding of the differences within ethnicities regarding the development of cardiovascular disease is needed and will lead to the development of better therapies targeted to each population. Based on all of this knowledge, we hypothesized that obesity would lead to different changes in the immune system of male and female, Caucasian and African American teenagers (14-20 year old).

Medical Research: What are the main findings?

Dr. De Miguel: We found differences in the immune cell profile in white and black teenagers, and within gender in the African American subjects. We believe that monitoring these differences could be used to recognize at an earlier stage those individuals that are at-risk of developing cardiovascular disease in the future, and this could allow for preventive therapies that would reduce such risk.

Specifically, we found that obese white teenagers decrease the numbers of T cells (a kind of immune cell) in the circulation (blood) compared to African American teenagers, which indicates that they have less systemic inflammation than the African Americans subjects in response to obesity. Within the African American subjects, we found that obese males had smaller numbers of T cytotoxic cells (CD8+ cells, a specific kind of T cell) and smaller numbers of activated T cytotoxic cells than lean males, what tells us that obese males are trying to decrease their inflammation levels. However, obese African American females do not decrease those levels, so their inflammation remains elevated. We think that the fact that they do not decrease the activation of T cytotoxic cells (CD8+ cells) could be important in explaining the high risk that black females have of developing cardiovascular disease later in life.

Medical Research: What should clinicians and patients take away from your report?

Dr. De Miguel: Our study demonstrate that obesity leads to changes in the inflammatory markers years before any cardiovascular disease is diagnosed (our subjects were healthy individuals), so maybe we should consider doing blood test in obese teenagers to monitor these changes early in life and help identify individuals at risk of developing cardiovascular disease later in life. Doing this could allow for preventive measures, such as changes in exercise and diet habits, that could diminish their chances of developing cardiovascular disease in adulthood.

Medical Research: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this study?

Dr. De Miguel: It would be interesting to further understand the molecular mechanisms by which the immune cells and their products lead to cardiovascular disease, so more research in that respect is needed. And also a further understanding of what leads to the sex and ethnicity differences in the activation status of immune cells in this situation is also needed.

Citation:

Council on Hypertension 2015 Scientific Sessions

Teen Obesity Leads To Changes In The Circulatory T Lymphocyte Profile Carmen De Miguel, Univ of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL; Xiaojing Xu, Yue Pan, Dennis Ownby, Xiaoling Wang, Georgia Regents Univ, Augusta, GA; Jennifer S. Pollock, Univ of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL

 

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Carmen De Miguel, PhD | Postdoctoral Scholar (2015). Chronic Inflammation May Predict Why Black Women More Prone To Heart Disease 

Last Updated on September 16, 2015 by Marie Benz MD FAAD