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Updated: Feb 18, 2026

On-Chip Endothelial Inflammatory Phenotyping
Published on: July 21, 2012
Inflammation in metabolically healthy and metabolically abnormal adolescents: The HELENA study
E M González-Gil1, C Cadenas-Sanchez2, J Santabárbara3
1GENUD "Growth, Exercise, NUtrition and Development" Research Group, Faculty of Health Sciences, Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain; Instituto Agroalimentario de Aragón (IA2), Spain; Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria Aragón (IIS Aragón), Spain; Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Fisiopatología de la Obesidad y Nutrición (CIBERObn), Spain.
Background And Aims:
Inflammation may influence the cardio-metabolic profile which relates with the risk of chronic diseases. This study aimed to assess the inflammatory status by metabolic health (MH)/body mass index (BMI) category and to assess how inflammatory markers can predict the cardio-metabolic profile in European adolescents, considering BMI.
Methods And Results:
A total of 659 adolescents (295 boys) from a cross-sectional European study were included. Adolescents were classified by metabolic health based on age- and sex-specific cut-off points for glucose, blood pressure, triglycerides, high density cholesterol and BMI. C-reactive protein (CRP), tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), interleukin (IL-6), complement factors (C3, C4) and cell adhesion molecules were assessed.
Results:
Metabolically abnormal (MA) adolescents had higher values of C3 (p < 0.001) and C4 (p = 0.032) compared to those metabolically healthy (MHy). C3 concentrations significantly increased with the deterioration of the metabolic health and BMI (p < 0.001). Adolescents with higher values of CRP had higher probability of being in the overweight/obese-MH group than those allocated in other categories. Finally, high C3 and C4 concentrations increased the probability of having an unfavorable metabolic/BMI status.
Conclusions:
Metabolic/BMI status and inflammatory biomarkers are associated, being the CRP, C3 and C4 the most related inflammatory markers with this condition. C3 and C4 were associated with the cardio-metabolic health consistently.
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