• Sebastian Hafner, Andreas Hillenbrand, Uwe Knippschild, and Peter Radermacher.
• Crit Care. 2013 Dec 10; 17 (6): 10231023.

AbstractIn the general population, obesity is associated with an increased mortality risk, whereas several epidemiological studies demonstrated a protective effect of obesity in critically ill patients. In this context, Sleeman and colleagues investigated the effects of obesity on kidney function in a well-established porcine model of cardiopulmonary bypass. The authors confirm literature data that obesity per se is associated with a chronic hyper-inflammatory status. Nevertheless, obese swine undergoing the surgical procedure presented with attenuated kidney dysfunction and tissue apoptosis. The authors suggest that the chronic inflammation causes pre-conditioning against excessive acute hyper-inflammation. The authors have to be commended for using a long-term, clinically relevant model that, moreover, addresses a variety of putative mechanisms. The study is discussed in the context of the controversial findings that, in contrast to the existing literature on improved survival, most studies available suggest a higher incidence and severity of acute kidney injury in obese patients when compared with lean controls.

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