Relationship between obesity and anxiety with nesfatin-1

Objective: Obesity is an important public health problem that is rapidly growing in the world. Obesity is a disease that causes multi-organ damage and death if not treated. Therefore, there are many research projects related to obesity. The relationship between obesity and the nesfatin 1 molecule was described for the first time in 2006. This 82-amino-acid molecule is related to satiety and is located in the hypothalamus. These molecules are secreted from neurons in areas where energy balance is regulated in the brain. This secretion suggests that the molecule can play a protective role against the development of obesity. However, in recent years, plasma levels of nesfatin in patients who develop obesity and psychiatric disorders are reported to be different from those in the healthy population. In our study, we aimed to detect levels of plasma nesfatin of highly anxious patients, low-anxious patients and non-obese healthy individuals and compare their results.

Methods: Blood samples were collected into tubes containing EDTA (Becton Dickinson, USA). Centrifugation at 1300g is used to separate the plasma. The plasma was divided into Eppendorf tubes and then 1% concentration protease inhibitor cocktail (Sigma Aldrich, USA) was added. It was then stored at -20°C. Analysis was performed using the ELISA method with a commercial kit (RayBiotech, USA). SPSS 15.0 software was used for statistical analysis. Statistical significance level P <0.05 was adopted. After psychiatric interviews with patients, Hospital Anxiety and Depression (HAD) scale was applied and anxiety scores were evaluated.

Results: The study involved totally 83 participants in 3 groups; obese-anxious (Group1) (n=29), obese-non-anxious (Group2) (n=29) and nonobese-nonanxious (Group3) (n=25). There was no statistically significant difference between the groups in terms of age and sex structure. The nesfatin-1 levels of Group1, Group2 and Group3 were 28.4±7.1, 28.7±6.9 and 34.6±10.9, respectively. In terms of nesfatin-1 levels, there were statistically significant differences between Group3 and both Group1 (p=0.023) and Group2 (p=0.034).

Conclusion: In our study, the measured nesfatin-1 levels of obese patients were found significantly lower compared with healthy controls independently of anxiety scores. There are many different data about nesfatin-1 in the literature, so we need further researches about this subject