Many adult and pediatric studies have demonstrated a clear relationship between plasma adiponectin and most variables of the metabolic syndrome (28, 29). With, several physiological processes have been proposed to explain the relationship this relationship. These processes include enhanced endothelial function and anti-inflammatory macrophage phenotypes, increased nitric oxide production, in addition to suppressing sympathetic nervous system activity and reduce blood pressure by induce adiponectin secretion (21). However, the relationship between plasma adiponectin and blood pressure is less definitive and can be quite contradictory. To the best of our knowledge this is the first study to investigate the relationship between plasma adiponectin and blood pressure in obese Latino adolescent males with a family history of type 2 diabetes. Our results show a significant positive relationship between plasma adiponectin and blood pressure, with adiponectin significantly predicting blood pressure in obese Latino adolescent males.
A few studies in adults have also shown a significant relationship between adiponectin and blood pressure (30–33). In Pediatrics, data has shown an inverse relationship between adiponectin and blood pressure (34–36), these results are conflicting to those presented in this study, which found a positive relationship between these variables. Most of these pediatric studies investigated this relationship in non-obese, non-Latino (37, 38), a small number were also in obese children (39–41), but none investigated this relationship in pediatric obese Latino males with a family history of type 2 diabetes. A report by Huang et al. showed an inverse relationship between SBP blood pressure but not DBP in a 68 non obese, nondiabetic females. The authors concluded that was independent of any other anthropometric and metabolic variable (38).
Shatat et al. also demonstrated in 41 obese and non-obese adolescences with and without the presence of Type 2 Diabetes that adiponectin levels were independently and inversely associated with 24-hr SBP and DBP (41). There results also showed no significant differences in adiponectin by gender, with the authors speculating the results could be attributed to the morbid obesity and its independent effect on reduced adiponectin levels. Because our participants were obese, it seems almost likely that fat distribution may influence adiponectin secretion. Shatat et al. study did have a similar sample size of 26 participants to the present study, their participants were male and females, some of their obese participants also were prehypertensive and hypertensive and included 10 black adolescent participants. Furthermore, pathological states such as metabolic syndrome and obesity have been shown to have an association with higher sympathetic nervous system activity. It may be possible that their results differed from ours for these reasons. Preliminary data of more than 100 male adolescents reported by Hunang et al., showed no relationship between adiponectin and BP (38). It is also possible that the relationship between adiponectin and BP may vary by race (42), thus explaining the differences in results from our study with that of Shat et al. African American (42, 43) and Asian Indians have been shown to have lower adiponectin levels when compared to white (44). Zhou et al. investigated the relationship between plasma adiponectin and blood pressure in a very large sample 1300 of children aged 9 to 16 years also found no significant associations (45). In contrast, Mallamaci et al found in a sample of 36 hypertensive and 31 normotensive adults found similar results to our study in that they too found a positive association between plasma adiponectin and blood pressure (46). These and our results suggest that the association between adiponectin and blood pressure may be placing these obese boys with a family history of type 2 diabetes at risk for said disease along with other metabolic and cardiovascular events (47, 48) and an increased risk of future heart failure (49).
There are sever limitations to our study worth noting, firstly, the small sample size; 2) this is a cross -sectional study design, which is not an appropriate design to assess cause and effect between adiponectin and blood pressure. However, the strength of our study is 1) the homogeneous sample, 2) the precise techniques; 3) representative sample of the obese Latino adolescent community and 4) as gender differences were not observed in several studies, we chose to focus on males so as not to confound the analysis.
In conclusion, adiponectin and blood pressure are closely related in these obese adolescent males with a family history of type 2 diabetes. Future larger studies in the Latino obese adolescent population need to be conducted due to the biological importance of adiponectin.