Yuji Matsuzawa
President ,International Atherosclerosis Society, Japan
Title: Visceral obesity, adiponectin and atherosclerosis
Biography
Biography: Yuji Matsuzawa
Abstract
Although cholesterol, especially LDL-cholesterol has been considered to be a major risk factor of atherosclerosis and cholesterol lowering drugs such as statins has been valued highly for the prevention of cardiovascular disease in the clinical field of all over the world, residual risks such as non-cholesterol dyslipidemia, diabetes mellitus and hypertension, especially clustering of these risks has been also known to contribute to the occurrence of cardiovascular disease. Many epidemiological studies has revealed that obesity, especially visceral obesity may induce the development of diabetes mellitus, hypertension and dyslipidemia and the clustering of these risks may become strong risks of cardiovascular disease. In this lecture, I will show an important role of visceral fat accumulation in the development of a variety of obesity-related disease including cardiovascular disease based on our clinical studies using CT scan and also discuss the mechanism of these disorders by focusing on adipocytokines, adipose tissue-derived bioactive substances especially, adiponectin which was discovered from human adipose tissue by our group in 1995. Adiponectin is a unique collagen-like protein which has anti-diabetic, anti-atherogenic function as well as anti-inflammatory function. I would like to show that hypoadiponectinemia caused by visceral fat accumulation is a key mechanism of a variety of obesity-related diseases such as DM, hypertension and lipid disorders and also directly cardiovascular disease.
