Leptin, adiponectin, their ratio and risk of Coronary Heart Disease: results from the MONICA/KORA Augsburg Study 1984-2002.

OBJECTIVE

Despite modulating a number of metabolic processes linked to atherosclerosis, including glucose regulation, hematopoiesis, fatty acid catabolism and angiogenesis, the potential association of adiponectin and leptin with coronary heart disease is still a matter of controversy.

METHODS

We conducted a population-based case-cohort study within the MONICA/KORA Augsburg studies. Serum levels of adipokines were measured in 333 case subjects with incident CHD and 1,728 non-case subjects selected from a source population of 9300 middle-aged men and women. Mean follow-up was 10.8+/-4.6 years. We sought to analyze the association of leptin and adiponectin and their ratio with CHD.

RESULTS

After adjustment for various confounding factors the hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals comparing tertile extremes were 0.79 (0.53-1.17) for leptin (top vs bottom tertile) and 0.87 (0. 62-1.23) for adiponectin (bottom vs top tertile), respectively. Furthermore, the ratio of leptin/adiponectin also showed no association with CHD (HR 1.01 (0.68-1.51)).

CONCLUSIONS

The present study reports the association of leptin and adiponectin with incident CHD in a large population-based cohort. In contrast to fairly strong associations previously reported, our findings indicate no clinically relevant association between leptin, adiponectin and their ratio with the risk of CHD after adjustment for potential confounders.