Correlation of serum leptin levels with clinical and biochemical parameters in obese children

Abstract

Background: Leptin plays a crucial role in the regulation of appetite, glucose homeostasis and body fat. Authors described various clinical and biochemical parameters of obese children aged 6 to 18 years visiting to outpatient department in a tertiary care hospital followed by their correlation with serum leptin levels. It was a prospective observational study.Methods: Obese children with Body Mass Index >2 standard deviation according to WHO chart were included. Endocrinological and syndromic obese children were excluded. Authors first compared leptin level of obese children with age and sex matched nonobese children. Followed by correlation of serum leptin levels with various clinical and laboratory parameters in obese children. Pearson’s correlation coefficient was used to compute the strength of relationship of leptin with various quantitative parameters. Mann-Whitney Test was also used when standard deviation was high, to calculate statistical significance.Results: Leptin concentration was significantly higher in obese children than non-obese. No significant difference in sex distribution was found. Serum leptin levels showed positive correlation with BMI, skin fold thickness and abdominal circumference, and blood pressure. No statistical correlation of leptin with biochemical parameters such as dyslipidemia, fasting blood glucose and insulin resistance was seen.Conclusions: In this study though serum leptin levels had a positive correlation with various clinical parameters, but no statistically significant correlation was seen with biochemical parameters. There is need for further investigation with a larger sample size on the role of leptin in childhood obesity.,

High free leptin index as the risk factor for childhood obesity in Indonesia: A case–control study

“…Children with higher leptin levels had a risk of 11.37 times of obesity. Our results were in line with the study conducted by Gowda et al They reported that in Indian children, serum leptin levels correlate with BMI and all children with obesity had high serum leptin 15 . Zhang et al also found similar results that newly identified children with obesity aged six to 11 years old had higher leptin levels than children without obesity, independent of sex after adjustment for age and Tanner stage, making high leptin levels a predictor of adiposity gain in prepubertal children without obesity 16 …”