Adipose tissue autophagy related gene expression is associated with glucometabolic status in human obesity.

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

• Level A · Stronger Clinical Evidence
• Level B · Emerging clinical evidence with positive signals
• Level C · Early human research exploring benefits
• Level D · Scientific groundwork from lab and animal studies
• Emerging · Emerging topic under active research

Abstract (original English)

Adipose tissue autophagy (AT) is associated with human obesity and increased metabolic risk. Recent findings establish a role for autophagy in lipid metabolism. Here, we compared the expression of autophagy-related and lipolysis genes in human abdominal subcutaneous AT (SCAT) in overweight/obese subjects (n = 17) with or without impaired glucose tolerance in comparison with lean normal glucose tolerant individuals (n = 9), and investigated the association between AT autophagy and lipolysis. Human multipotent adipose-derived stem cells (hMADS) were used to investigate the effect of pharmacological HSL inhibition on changes in the autophagic flux. The expression of autophagy-related genes (ATG) 5, 7 and 12 in SCAT was significantly higher (p = 0.043, p = 0.015, p = 0.004, respectively) in overweight/obese compared to lean men, while expression of the classical lipases HSL (p = 0.092) and ATGL (p = 0.084) tended to be lower. ATG12 mRNA was positively correlated with BMI (r = 0.407, p = 0.039). ATG7 mRNA correlated positively with waist/hip ratio (WHR) (r = 0.420, p = 0.041), 2 h glucose concentration (r = 0.488, p = 0.011) and insulin (r = 0.419, p = 0.033). Multiple linear regressions revealed that ATG7 gene expression was positively related to 2 h glucose, independent of BMI, WHR and insulin. Gene expression interaction analysis showed that ATG7 mRNA negatively correlated with H

Evidence level

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

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