Comparison of Thermogenic Sympathetic Response to Food Intake between Obese and Non‐obese Young Women

Abstract

MATSUMOTO, TAMAKI, CHIEMI MIYAWAKI, HIDETOSHI UE, TOMO KANDA, YASUHIDE YOSHITAKE, AND TOSHIO MORITANI. Comparison of thermogenic sympathetic response to food intake between obese and non-obese young women. Obes Res. 2001;9:78 -85. Objective: Sympathetic nervous system abnormality in humans is still a matter of debate. The present study was designed to examine diet-induced autonomic nervous system activity and metabolic change in obese and non-obese young women. Research Methods and Procedures: Sixteen age-and height-matched obese and non-obese young women participated in this study. Sympathovagal activities were assessed by means of our newly developed spectral analysis procedure of heart-rate variability during the resting condition and after mixed-food ingestion (480 kcal). Energy expenditure was also measured under these two conditions. Results: There was no significant difference in any of the parameters of the heart-rate variability between the obese group and control group during the resting condition. In the control group, both absolute values (221.5 Ϯ 54.5 vs. 363.8 Ϯ 43.7 ms 2 , p Ͻ 0.05) and relative values (0.23 Ϯ 0.03 to 0.36 Ϯ 0.02, p Ͻ 0.05) of a very-low-frequency component and global sympathetic nervous system index (1.46 Ϯ 0.19 vs. 3.26 Ϯ 0.61, p Ͻ 0.05) were significantly increased after mixed-food ingestion compared with the values obtained after resting condition. However, no such sympathetic response was found in the obese group. Energy expenditure increased in the two groups after the meal, but the magnitude of the increase above the preprandial resting condition was significantly greater in the control group than in the obese group (11.2 Ϯ 2.3 vs. 6.7 Ϯ 0.8%, p Ͻ 0.05). Discussion: Our data suggest that despite identical sympathovagal activities at the resting condition, obese young women may possess a reduced sympathetic response to physiological perturbation such as mixed food intake, which might be related to lowered capacity of thermogenesis and the state of obesity.

α2B-Adrenergic receptor deletion polymorphism and cardiac autonomic nervous system responses to exercise in obese women

“…29 As the sympathetic branch of the autonomic system particularly contributes to coordinating energy homeostasis, any alteration in sympathetic nervous system is widely assumed to promote onset and development of obesity. 14,30 Nagai et al 30 showed that the complete autonomic blockade evaluated by means of PSA of HRV significantly reduced the energy expenditure in humans. In addition, Heinonen et al 1 found that the Glu 9 /Glu 9 genotype was associated with reduced basal metabolic rate in obese Finns population.…”

“…[7][8][9] In the present study, we used HRV as a strategy to study the sympathetic and vagal controls during sustained handgrip exercise in obese individuals with 12Glu9 deletion polymorphism of the a 2B -AR gene. Previous investigations using HRV analysis [10][11][12][13][14] and measurements of plasma catecholamines 15,16 showed altered sympathetic responsiveness during cold exposure, spicy food containing capsaicin and glucose ingestion in obese individuals.…”

Metabolic and physiological effects of ingesting extracts of bitter orange, green tea and guarana at rest and during treadmill walking in overweight males

“…Spraul et al 2 identified a role for reduced sympathetic nervous system activity in bodyweight gain, which increases susceptibility to obesity. Recent data has suggested that obese individuals exhibit significantly lower sympathetic nervous system activity in response to various physiological challenges, such as food intake 3 and capsaicin intake. 4 These results would suggest that overweight individuals might be treated effectively with the use of sympathomimetic agonists.…”

UCP1 genetic polymorphism (–3826 A/G) diminishes resting energy expenditure and thermoregulatory sympathetic nervous system activity in young females

“…High-pass filtering at 0.007 Hz was chosen to include the frequency components associated with thermoregulatory control in SNS activity as identified by the Simplex method. 13 We previously reported that 0.007-0.035 Hz of the heart rate variability power spectrum was selectively increased against various thermogenic perturbations, such as acute cold exposure, 11,12 food intake, 13 high-carbohydrate meal 15 and spice-containing meal 14,16 in adult individuals [12][13][14] or children. 11,15,16 After passage through the Humming-type data window, power spectral analysis using a fast Fourier transform was performed on a consecutive 1024 s time series of R-R interval data obtained during the measurement.…”

“…To examine the role of UCP1 in usual energy balance in adult humans, we therefore investigated whether or not the -3826 A/G polymorphism of the UCP1 gene is associated with resting energy expenditure (REE) and thermoregulatory SNS activity by power spectral analysis of heart rate variability, according to our previously reported method, [11][12][13][14][15][16] in young healthy females.…”