Suppression of NF-κB activation by PDLIM2 restrains hepatic lipogenesis and inflammation in high fat diet induced mice.

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is characterized by hepatic steatosis, insulin resistance, dyslipidemia and a systemic pro-inflammatory response, a leading cause of cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Here, we showed that PDZ-LIM domain-containing protein 2 (PDLIM2) was an effective suppressor of steatohepatitis. After 16 weeks on a high fat diet (HFD), obesity, insulin resistance, hepatic dyslipidemia and inflammation were markedly aggravated in PDLIM2-knockout (KO) mice.

Assessing causal estimates of the association of obesity-related traits with coronary artery disease using a Mendelian randomization approach.

Obesity-related traits have been associated with coronary artery disease (CAD) in observational studies, but these associations may be biased by confounding factors and reverse causation. In this study, we specifically conducted two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses to overcome these limitations and test the associations of obesity-related traits (other than body mass index (BMI)) (n = 322,154) with CAD (22,233 cases and 64,762 controls) by using summary-level data from previous studies. The methods utilized to estimate these associations included the inverse-variance weighted method, the weighted median method and MR-Egger regression.