Change in adiposity is associated with change in glycoprotein acetyls but not hsCRP in adolescents with severe obesity.

Background: Obesity-associated chronic inflammation mediates the development of adverse cardiometabolic outcomes. There are sparse data on associations between severe obesity and inflammatory biomarkers in adolescence; most are cross-sectional and limited to acute phase reactants. Here, we investigate associations between adiposity measures and inflammatory biomarkers in children and adolescents with severe obesity both cross-sectionally and longitudinally.

Methods: From the Childhood Overweight Biorepository of Australia (COBRA) study, a total of n = 262 participants, mean age 11.5 years (SD 3.5) with obesity had measures of adiposity (body mass index, BMI; % above the 95th BMI-centile, %>95th BMI-centile; waist circumference, WC; waist/height ratio, WtH; % total body fat, %BF; % truncal body fat, %TF) and inflammation biomarkers (glycoprotein acetyls, GlycA; high-sensitivity C-Reactive Protein, hsCRP; white blood cell count, WBC; and neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio, NLR) assessed at baseline. Ninety-eight individuals at mean age of 15.9 years (3.7) participated in a follow-up study 5.6 (2.1) years later. Sixty-two individuals had longitudinal data. Linear regression models, adjusted for age and sex for cross-sectional analyses were applied. To estimate longitudinal associations between change in adiposity measures with inflammation biomarkers, models were adjusted for baseline measures of adiposity and inflammation.

Results: All adiposity measures were cross-sectionally associated with GlycA, hsCRP and WBC at both time points. Change in BMI, %>95th BMI-centile, WC, WtH and %TF were associated with concomitant change in GlycA and WBC, but not in hsCRP and NLR.

Conclusion: GlycA and WBC but not hsCRP and NLR may be useful in assessing adiposity-related severity of chronic inflammation over time.