In utero nutritional stress as a cause of obesity: Altered relationship between body fat, leptin levels and caloric intake in offspring into adulthood.

Aims: Emerging evidence suggests that during gestation the in utero environment programs metabolism and can increase risk of obesity in adult offspring. Our aim was to study how alterations in maternal diets during gestation might alter body weight evolution, circulating leptin levels and caloric intake in offspring, leading to changes in body composition.

Materials And Methods: We fed gestating rats either a control diet (CD), high fat diet (HFD) or an isocaloric low protein diet (LPD), and examined the repercussions in offspring fed similar diets post-weaning on birth weight, body weight evolution, body composition, insulin sensitivity, glucose tolerance and in the relationship between plasma leptin concentration and caloric intake in offspring during growth and development.

The effect of insulin on expression of genes and biochemical pathways in human skeletal muscle.

To study the insulin effects on gene expression in skeletal muscle, muscle biopsies were obtained from 20 insulin sensitive individuals before and after euglycemic hyperinsulinemic clamps. Using microarray analysis, we identified 779 insulin-responsive genes. Particularly noteworthy were effects on 70 transcription factors, and an extensive influence on genes involved in both protein synthesis and degradation.

Atypical antipsychotic drugs directly impair insulin action in adipocytes: effects on glucose transport, lipogenesis, and antilipolysis.

Treatment with second-generation antipsychotics (SGAs) has been associated with weight gain and the development of diabetes mellitus, although the mechanisms are unknown. We tested the hypothesis that SGAs exert direct cellular effects on insulin action and substrate metabolism in adipocytes. We utilized two cultured cell models including 3T3-L1 adipocytes and primary cultured rat adipocytes, and tested for effects of SGAs risperidone (RISP), clozapine (CLZ), olanzapine (OLZ), and quetiapine (QUE), together with conventional antipsychotic drugs butyrophenone (BUTY), and trifluoperazine (TFP), over a wide concentration range from 1 to 500 microM.

Facilitative glucose transporter gene expression in human lymphocytes, monocytes, and macrophages: a role for GLUT isoforms 1, 3, and 5 in the immune response and foam cell formation.

Cellular glucose uptake is mediated by a family of facilitative glucose transporters (GLUT) exhibiting differences in kinetics, substrate specificity, and tissue-specific expression. GLUT isoform expression has not been comprehensively studied in human leukocytes, which participate in immune and inflammatory responses and are critical for host defense. Therefore, we studied the regulated expression of GLUT 1-5 mRNA and protein in isolated human lymphocytes and monocytes and in human THP-1 macrophages and foam cells.