New research from the University of York is shedding light on the mechanisms underlying why men are more likely to die from obesity-related illnesses than women.
In a mouse study recently published in iScienceresearchers suggest that processes associated with inflammation are more prevalent in adipose tissue in men.
According to New Atlasan investigation of 2016 had already established that men have three times more likely to die of obesity-related illnesses than women.
In the study – which analyzed health data from around four million people – no explanations were advanced as to why obese men are more vulnerable to premature death than obese women.
In recent years, researchers at the University of York have been trying to answer this question. In 2018, they found that female mice produced more blood vessels in adipose tissues than male mice. This increase in vascularization was associated with lower rates of metabolic abnormalities.
In this new investigation, they focused on the specific endothelial cells that make up blood vessels in adipose tissue. The objective was to understand which genetic differences associated with the sex of the mice could be detected in these cells.
The results revealed genetic differences between male and female rats, particularly with regard to genes linked to inflammation. Blood vessel cells in adipose tissue from males carried pro-inflammatory genetic markers that were not detected in the same cells from females.
“It is striking the extent of processes associated with inflammation that prevail in males. Other studies have shown that when endothelial cells have this type of inflammatory response, they are very dysfunctional, and they don’t respond to stimuli properly,” said Tara Haas, the project’s principal investigator.
THE mystery thickened when investigators observed the behavior of endothelial cells under laboratory conditions. Removed from the body, female endothelial cells from adipose tissue replicated faster than similar cells from men.
“Even when we removed them from the body,” thereby removing contact with circulating sex hormones or other types of factors, “male and female endothelial cells still behaved very differently from each other,” added Haas.
The researchers suggest that this difference in the epigenetic characteristics of endothelial cells between males and females explains variations in obesity-related diseases. However, it is still not known exactly what can cause these cellular differences in adipose tissue.
“This is not just an obesity issue – I think it’s a much broader conceptual issue that also encompasses healthy ageing. An implication of our findings is that there will be situations where the treatment that is ideal for men will not be ideal for women and vice versa”, concluded the researcher.
ZAP // 
