In clinical practice, combined heart and liver dysfunctions coexist in the setting of the main heart and liver diseases because of complex cardiohepatic interactions. It is becoming increasingly crucial to identify these interactions between heart and liver in order to ensure an effective management of patients with heart or liver disease to provide an improvement in overall prognosis and therapy. In this review, we aim to summarize the cross-talk between heart and liver in the setting of the main pathologic conditions affecting these organs. Accordingly, we present the clinical manifestation, biochemical profiles, and histological findings of cardiogenic ischemic hepatitis and congestive hepatopathy due to acute and chronic heart failure, respectively. In addition, we discuss the main features of cardiac dysfunction in the setting of liver cirrhosis, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, and those following liver transplantation.

Osteoarthritis is a common chronic joint disorder affecting older people. The knee is the major joint affected. The symptoms of osteoarthritis include limited range of motion, joint swelling, and pain causing disability. There are no disease modifying drugs available, and treatments are mainly focused on pain management. Total knee replacement performed at the end stage of the disease is considered the only cure available. It has been found that obese people have an increased risk to develop not only knee but also hand osteoarthritis. This supports the concept that adipose tissue might be related to osteoarthritis not only through overloading. As matter of fact, obesity induces a low grade systemic inflammatory state characterized by the production and secretion of several adipocytokines that may have a role in osteoarthritis development. Furthermore, hypertension, impaired glucose, and lipid metabolism, which are comorbidities associated with obesity, have been shown to alter the joint tissue homeostasis. Moreover, infrapatellar fat pad in the knee has been demonstrated to be a local source of adipocytokines and potentially contribute to osteoarthritis pathogenesis. Here, we discuss the role of systemic and local adipose tissue in knee osteoarthritis. J. Cell. Physiol. 232: 1971-1978, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Obesity is one of the major epidemics of this millennium, and its incidence is growing worldwide. Following the epidemics of obesity, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has become a disease of increasing prevalence and a leading cause of morbidity and mortality closely related to cardiovascular disease, malignancies, and cirrhosis. It is believed that oxidative stress is a main player in the development and progression of NAFLD. Currently, a pharmacological approach has become necessary in NAFLD because of a failure to modify lifestyle and dietary habits in most patients. Vitamin E is a potent antioxidant that has been shown to reduce oxidative stress in NAFLD. This review summarizes the biological activities of vitamin E, with a primary focus on its therapeutic efficacy in NAFLD.

Obesity is the consequence of chronic positive energy balance and considered a leading risk factor for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. Due to its epidemic trends among children and adults, there is an increasing interest in implementing new therapeutic interventions to tackle overweight and obesity. Activation of brown adipose tissue (BAT) represents today a promising strategy to enhance energy expenditure (EE) through heat production. More recently, “browning” of white adipose tissue (WAT) has gained increasing attention in research area as an alternative method in stimulating energy dissipation. This minireview aims to summarize the current knowledge of some dietary compounds that have been shown to promote BAT activation and WAT browning with subsequent beneficial health effects.

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) plays a key role in adaptive thermogenesis in mammals, and it has recently been considered as an attractive therapeutic target for tackling human obesity by increasing energy expenditure. Thermal imaging using infrared thermography (IRT) has emerged as a potential safe, rapid and inexpensive technique for detecting BAT in humans. However, little attention has been given to the reliability of this method in obese subjects. To this end, we evaluated the capacity of IRT to detect activated supraclavicular (SCV) BAT in 14 lean and 16 mildly obese young adults after acute cold exposure. Using IRT we measured the temperature of the skin overlying the SCV and sternal areas at baseline and after acute cold stimulation. Additionally, energy expenditure was measured by indirect calorimetry and body composition was estimated using bioelectrical impedance analysis. Energy expenditure and SCV skin temperature significantly increased in lean subjects upon cold exposure, while no significant changes were detected in the obese group. Furthermore, cold-induced variations in SCV skin temperature of obese subjects showed a negative correlation with body mass index. This study suggests that in lean individuals BAT is a rapidly activated thermogenic tissue possibly involved in the regulation of energy balance, and can be indirectly assessed using IRT. In obese subjects, BAT seems less prone to be activated by cold exposure, with the degree of adiposity representing a limiting factor for the indirect detection of BAT activation by measuring the skin temperature overlying BAT.