Clinical and biochemical parameters in relation to serum leptin levels in South Indian children and adolescents.

Objective: To investigate the relationship between serum leptin and lipid profile in South Indian School children and adolescents, and to evaluate the role of serum leptin in obese, overweight and congenital heart diseased children and adolescents; in South Indian population and its correlation with anthropometric and biochemical parameters.

Methods: The study included 185 school going children and adolescents. (52 obese, 49 overweight, 25 congenital heart disease children and adolescents, were compared with 59 normal controls, aged between 10-17 years). Anthropometric variables, lipid profile, fasting serum glucose were analyzed by autoanalyser and serum leptin by ELISA.

Results: Serum leptin levels were significantly elevated in obese and overweight children than in control children (36.88+/-18.60ng/mL, 20.64+/-11.18ng/mL vs 7.97+/-2.79ng/mL; p value <0.001), and decreased in congenital heart diseased children than in control children (6.20+/-4.23 ng/mL vs 7.97+/-2.79ng/mL; p value <0.005).

Conclusions: This study provides a good relationship between serum leptin levels and anthropometric and biochemical parameters, such as total cholesterol, triglycerides and LDL-cholesterol. We observed negative correlation between serum leptin and fasting glucose levels and HDL-cholesterol levels were found to be non-significant among the groups. Further studies with large sample size are needed to ascertain the relationship between serum leptin and lipid profile in different groups of children and adolescents.