Panminerva medica
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study
The impact of obesity on disease activity, damage accrual, inflammation markers and cardiovascular risk factors in systemic lupus erythematosus.
We aimed to evaluate the relationships between obesity metrics including Body Mass Index (BMI), waist to height ratio (WtHR) and fat mass percentage, and disease activity, damage accrual, inflammation markers and traditional cardiovascular risk factors in SLE patients. ⋯ Patients with SLE who are obese have worse disease activity and damage accrual, higher levels of inflammation markers hs-CRP and C3 complement, increased triglycerides serum levels and systolic blood pressure levels in comparison with overweight or normal weight SLE patients, supporting that optimizing weight in SLE patients should be a potential target to improve SLE outcomes.
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The proteomic approach applied to the analysis of BAL gives a panorama of the complex network of proteins of different origin and function and their modifications at alveolar level. Cigarette smoking may influence BAL protein composition and it represents the most relevant risk factor for several lung diseases. ⋯ The comparison of BAL protein profiles of smokers and non-smoker healthy controls revealed alterations of proteins related to oxidative stress and protease/antiprotease imbalance (such as alpha 1 antitrypsin, alpha-1-antichymotrypsin, apolipoprotein A1, peroxiredoxin 1 and glutathione S transferase P). Smoking exposure leads to a significant dysregulation of a large number of molecular pathways involved in interstitial lung diseases and the proteomic studies applied to the study of BAL of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, sarcoidosis and other ILD contributed to clarify the underlying pathogenetic mechanisms facilitating ILD development and biomarker discovery.