Visceral Adipose Tissue

Obesity has become a major public health problem in both developed and developing countries, with a continuous increase particularly since the 1980s. Moreover, it is a well-established metabolic risk factor for diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and various types of cancer, as well as cardiovascular diseases such as heart failure and coronary artery disease. Body mass index (BMI) is calculated by dividing body weight in kilograms by the square of height in meters and is widely used as an indicator of obesity. However, BMI does not quantitatively reflect body fat distribution and fails to account for components such as skeletal muscle and bone mass. Therefore, interest in assessing body fat distribution has increased, and in recent years, studies evaluating the correlation between anthropometric, biochemical, and anatomical measurements and clinical outcomes have become more frequent. In particular, it is acknowledged that abdominal obesity cannot be accurately represented by BMI alone and is primarily associated with visceral adipose tissue (VAT). The aim of this study is to evaluate the association between preoperative visceral and subcutaneous adipose tissue measurements (VAT and SAT), assessed by ultrasonography in patients scheduled for open-heart surgery, and the development of postoperative atrial fibrillation.

Disruption of white adipose tissue (WAT) homeostasis during obesity is central to the development of associated cardiometabolic complications. Dietary supplementation with oleic acid in obese patients can limit these complications. Experimental data, obtained in preclinical models, suggest that the beneficial effects of oleic acid may protect the TAB by increasing cholesterol esterification. The NAMICO study aims to test this hypothesis using TAB biopsies collected from obese patients undergoing bariatric surgery who had previously undergone dietary enrichment with either a conventional oil or an oil rich in oleic acid.

Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) is a chronic recurrent nonspecific inflammatory disease of the intestinal tract that can involve multiple organs and systems, mainly including Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). Recurrent disease episodes lead to high rates of disability and unemployment, resulting in a heavy social and economic burden. Currently, the main therapeutic agents for IBD include aminosalicylic acid preparations, glucocorticoids, immunosuppressive agents, and biologic agents, e.g. tumor necrosis factor-a (TNF-a) inhibitors, ustekinumab, etc., with TNF-a inhibitors being the most commonly used in IBD. The latest guidelines and expert consensus on the diagnosis and management of IBD clearly recommend the use of anti-TNF-a agents. However, not all patients are satisfied with the efficacy of anti-TNF-a agents, and studies have shown that up to 33.7% of responders to induction therapy experience secondary loss of response within a year of starting treatment. Patients remain at risk of poor efficacy or treatment failure with these drugs. Therefore, effective prediction of drug efficacy in patients with IBD is an urgent clinical problem, and the discovery of highly sensitive and specific assays that can identify patients most likely to benefit from treatment as well as those most likely to experience a loss of response is important for guiding clinical therapeutic strategies. Currently, there are no relevant studies at home or abroad on the combination of intestinal ultrasound (IUS) with visceral adipose tissue (VAT) to predict the response to anti-TNF-a therapy in IBD patients. Therefore, the investigators propose for the first time that IUS combined with VAT is used as a method to predict the efficacy of anti-TNF-a therapy in IBD patients and to further guide the development of individualized treatment plans.