The Key Role of Akt Protein Kinase in Metabolic-Inflammatory Pathways Cross-Talk: TNF-α Down-Regulation and Improving of Insulin Resistance in HepG2 Cell Line.

Background: Elevation of plasma free fatty acids as a principal aspect of type 2 diabetes maintains etiologically insulin insensitivity in target cells. TNF-α inhibitory effects on key insulin signaling pathway elements remain to be verified in insulinresistant hepatic cells. Thus, TNF-α knockdown effects on the key elements of insulin signaling were investigated in the palmitate-induced insulin-resistant hepatocytes.

Obesity: A preventable, treatable, but relapsing disease.

In 2013, the American Medical Association recognized obesity as a disease, of growing scientific, social, and political interest. In 2016 in the United States, prevalence rates of preobesity and obesity exceeded 60%. In Italy, these rates exceeded 40%.

Obesity phenotypes and resorption percentage after breast autologous fat grafting: Rule of low-grade inflammation.

Background: One of the main reasons why the breast fat grafting was questioned is that there may be lipofilling resorption. In the literature, the resorption rate reported over the 1(st) year is highly variable (20-90%).

Objective: The aim of this work was to identify the biochemical and clinical parameters, which increase fat graft maintenance in breast reconstruction.

Bioelectrical impedance analysis-part II: utilization in clinical practice.

BIA is easy, non-invasive, relatively inexpensive and can be performed in almost any subject because it is portable. Part II of these ESPEN guidelines reports results for fat-free mass (FFM), body fat (BF), body cell mass (BCM), total body water (TBW), extracellular water (ECW) and intracellular water (ICW) from various studies in healthy and ill subjects. The data suggests that BIA works well in healthy subjects and in patients with stable water and electrolytes balance with a validated BIA equation that is appropriate with regard to age, sex and race.

Bioelectrical impedance analysis--part I: review of principles and methods.

The use of bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) is widespread both in healthy subjects and patients, but suffers from a lack of standardized method and quality control procedures. BIA allows the determination of the fat-free mass (FFM) and total body water (TBW) in subjects without significant fluid and electrolyte abnormalities, when using appropriate population, age or pathology-specific BIA equations and established procedures. Published BIA equations validated against a reference method in a sufficiently large number of subjects are presented and ranked according to the standard error of the estimate.

Nifedipine-induced changes in body composition in hypertensive patients at term.

Background: There are few studies on the effect of nifedipine on fluid homeostasis during pregnancy.

Objective: To assess the variation of body composition at term in patients with normal pregnancy and patients with gestational hypertension (GH) treated with nifedipine.

Methods: Seventeen healthy patients with singleton pregnancies and 12 non-proteinuric patients with gestational hypertension treated with nifedipine were enrolled consecutively from our University Hospital from January 2000 to January 2001.