LISBON — Neutrophil infiltration and vascular inflammation were substantially more prevalent and severe in blood vessels from overweight and obese women than in vessels taken from normal-weight women.
“The data indicate that the vasculature of obese women is inflamed and susceptible to developing hypertension,” Scott W. Walsh, Ph.D., said at the 15th World Congress of the International Society for the Study of Hypertension in Pregnancy.
“We speculate that neutrophil infiltration and vascular inflammation puts obese women at risk for preeclampsia,” said Dr. Walsh, professor of ob.gyn. at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.
Dr. Walsh and associates assessed neutrophil infiltration and vascular inflammation in the blood vessels of adipose tissue biopsies taken from 22 volunteers. Participants were divided into three groups based on their BMI. Five normal-weight women had a BMI of less than 25 kg/m
Neutrophil infiltration was measured using a monoclonal-antibody stain against CD66b, a granulocyte membrane antigen. Inflammation was measured with monoclonal-antibody stains against two markers of inflammation, NF-kB and cyclooxygenase (COX)-2.The extent of vessel staining with these reagents was gauged in fixed, adipose tissue specimens by two measures: a visual score scale of 0–3 and stained vessels as a percent of all vessels examined.
By both measurements, all three stains were significantly increased in both overweight and obese women, compared with the normal-weight controls. The greatest staining was in the vessels from obese women. For example, for NF-kB staining, the visual score was about 0.3 in biopsies from normal-weight women, about 1.1 in overweight women, and about 2.6 in obese women. The percent of vessels stained was about 28%, 60%, and 90%, respectively. Similar results were obtained with the stains for neutrophils and for COX-2.
The images show blood vessels in fixed, adipose-tissue biopsies that were stained for the cytokine NF-kB, a marker for vascular inflammation. The control specimen (left) is from a normal-weight woman and shows no NF-kB staining. The specimen on the right, from a woman with a BMI of at least 30 kg/m
