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This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Supplemental Figures All Versions of this Article: 296/6/E1300    most recent 90885.2008v1 Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Google Scholar Articles by Varma, V. Articles by Peterson, C. A. PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Varma, V. Articles by Peterson, C. A.

Muscle inflammatory response and insulin resistance: synergistic interaction between macrophages and fatty acids leads to impaired insulin action

¹Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System, ²Division of Endocrinology, Department of Medicine, and ³Department of Pediatrics and Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, Arkansas; ⁴Department of Biostatistics, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and ⁵College of Health Sciences, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky

Submitted 30 October 2008 ; accepted in final form 18 March 2009

Obesity is characterized by adipose tissue expansion as well as macrophage infiltration of adipose tissue. This results in an increase in circulating inflammatory cytokines and nonesterified fatty acids, factors that cause skeletal muscle insulin resistance. Whether obesity also results in skeletal muscle inflammation is not known. In this study, we quantified macrophages immunohistochemically in vastus lateralis biopsies from eight obese and eight lean subjects. Our study demonstrates that macrophages infiltrate skeletal muscle in obesity, and we developed an in vitro system to study this mechanistically. Myoblasts were isolated from vastus lateralis biopsies and differentiated in culture. Coculture of differentiated human myotubes with macrophages in the presence of palmitic acid, to mimic an obese environment, revealed that macrophages in the presence of palmitic acid synergistically augment cytokine and chemokine expression in myotubes, decrease IB- protein expression, increase phosphorylated JNK, decrease phosphorylated Akt, and increase markers of muscle atrophy. These results suggest that macrophages alter the inflammatory state of muscle cells in an obese milieu, inhibiting insulin signaling. Thus in obesity both adipose tissue and skeletal muscle inflammation may contribute to insulin resistance.

muscle cells; inflammation