Protein brings "healthy" obesity

Not everyone who is fat is unhealthy Researchers found that a small number of overweight people have normal blood sugar levels and blood pressure, so they are "healthy" obesity Now scientists have identified a single protein that seems to determine whether obesity is harmful or benign Alan saltiel, a cell biologist at the University of Michigan who was not involved in the study, said the protein was a new "helper" to help people understand how obesity causes disease
As we all know, obesity can cause many health problems, such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer Last year, the American Medical Association voted to classify obesity as a disease Although some researchers suggest that a small number of obese people are healthy, this view remains controversial According to Ravi retnakaran, an endocrinologist at the Sinai diabetes center in Canada, a new view is that healthy obesity is a temporary phenomenon, and these abnormal values will develop into metabolic syndrome sooner or later   In fact, the so-called healthy obese people may have shown early signs of the disease, but it is too gentle and difficult to check Last year, in a study of 14000 South Koreans with metabolic health, scientists found that obese people had a higher rate of arterial thrombocytopenia than lean people   To figure out when the transition from healthy to unhealthy happens, Harald Esterbauer, an obesity expert at Vienna Medical University in Austria, and his colleagues carefully studied a protein called heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) HO-1 is believed to inhibit inflammation When islet cells are exposed to high levels of nutrients, they start to become inflamed This will lead to the death of some islet cells, thus reducing insulin secretion, leading to type II diabetes   To understand the role of HO-1, the researchers examined the blood, fat and liver tissues of 44 obese people and 6 control group members All of these obese people look healthy on the surface, but they have a critical difference: 27 people develop insulin tolerance The other 17 obese people had normal insulin response The researchers found that HO-1 levels were twice as high in the insulin resistance group The results suggest that HO-1 leads to insulin tolerance   In addition, the mouse experiment also showed the same conclusion "We believe that HO-1 is an early marker of metabolic disease." Esterbauer said The researchers published the results in the journal Cell The team also found that the HO-1 level of healthy obese people was slightly higher than that of the control group.