Background: The rate of obesity is increasing throughout the world. Obesity in adults' research is characterized by chronic inflammation, associated with type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular risk. The degree to which these changes occur in childhood obesity is not fully defined.
Aim: This study was designed to explore the relation between circulating levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines, and obesity.
Patients and methods: This cross sectional case control study was carried out in 50 randomly selected pre-pubertal overweight and obese children compared with fifty apparently healthy children of matched age and sex. Serum levels of transforming growth factor-β1, interleukin-6, and haptoglobin were quantified by ELISA technique.
Results: ANOVA test followed by Post Hoc test showed highly significant increase in the serum levels of the transforming growth factor-β1, interleukin-6 and haptoglobin among obese children compared to overweight and healthy children respectively. The body weight, BMI and BMI z-score were significantly positively correlated with serum levels of the three pro-inflammatory cytokines. Serum levels of interleukin-6, and haptoglobin were found to be strong predictors of complications in severe obesity by linear regression analysis.
Conclusions: Obesity is associated with chronic low-grade inflammation. High levels of interleukin-6 and haptoglobin are considered to be early biomarkers of inflammation associated with severe obesity with subsequent cardiovascular and type 2 diabetes risk.
Keywords: Egyptian Children; Obesity Complications; Prepubertal; clinical relevance; haptoglobin; interleukin-6; prediction; transforming growth factor-β1.