ABSTRACT
Background Obesity and chronic diseases associated with the development of inflammation have remained unclear if the observed inflammatory state in diabetic patients is due to excess adipose tissue mass and/or directly associated with the diabetic state. Therefore, this study determined the risk factors associated with inflammation in hypertensive patients with type-2 diabetes mellitus.
Methods A total of 164 hypertensive diabetic patients aged 38 to 60 years were selected from seven primary health care centers in Gaza city, Palestine. Interview and questionnaire were employed to collect data related to age, gender, smoking habits, and physical activity pattern. Besides, the selection of patients depended on objective criteria.
Results The study involved 118 (72%) women and 46 (28%) men. The mean of age for all patients was 53.7±0.46 years old. 76 patients (46.3%) were categorized as current smokers, 88 patients (53.7%) categorized as non-smokers. The baseline distribution of patients according to physical activity has displayed that 130 (79.3%) were low physically active patients, 28 (27.1%) were moderate, and 6 (3.7%) were highly physically active patients. A tertile of inflammation feature with high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) was developed. The highest tertile of hs-CRP was significantly associated with women, higher obesity indices, metabolic dysregulation involving lipid profile markers, fasting blood glucose (FBG) and blood pressure, higher interleukin 6 (IL-6), and lower adiponectin. Via ordinal logistic regression analysis, after adjusting for age, gender, smoking habits, and physical activity; the risk factors for hs-CRP were the increased body mass index [OR: 1.17, P=0.018], IL-6 [OR: 2.22, P=0.025] and FBG [OR: 1.01, P=0.007], as well as reduced adiponectin [OR: 0.81, P=0.002].
Conclusion The inflammation state was affected by obesity and had been related to altered adipokines levels of IL-6 and adiponectin, as well as affected by the disease condition of diabetes, as evidenced by higher serum level of FBG.