Abstract
Obesity is a multifactorial disorder often associated with many important diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and other metabolic syndrome conditions. Argyrophil cells represent almost the total population of endocrine cells of the human gastric mucosa and some reports have described changes of specific types of these cells in patients with obesity and metabolic syndrome. The present study was designed to evaluate the global population of argyrophil cells of the gastric mucosa of morbidly obese and dyspeptic non-obese patients. Gastric biopsies of antropyloric and oxyntic mucosa were obtained from 50 morbidly obese patients (BMI >40) and 50 non-obese patients (17 dyspeptic overweight and 33 lean individuals) and processed for histology and Grimelius staining for argyrophil cell demonstration. Argyrophil cell density in the oxyntic mucosa of morbidly obese patients was higher in female (238.68 ± 83.71 cells/mm2) than in male patients (179.31 ± 85.96 cells/mm2) and also higher in female (214.20 ± 50.38 cells/mm2) than in male (141.90 ± 61.22 cells/mm2) morbidly obese patients with metabolic syndrome (P = 0.01 and P = 0.02, respectively). In antropyloric mucosa, the main difference in argyrophil cell density was observed between female morbidly obese patients with (167.00 ± 69.30 cells/mm2) and without (234.00 ± 69.54 cells/mm2) metabolic syndrome (P = 0.001). In conclusion, the present results show that the number of gastric argyrophil cells could be under gender influence in patients with morbid obesity. In addition, gastric argyrophil cells seem to behave differently among female morbidly obese patients with and without metabolic syndrome.
Highlights
The etiology of obesity, a serious medical condition that affects an increasingly large number of individuals, is unknown it is believed to be multifactorial [1]
The neuroendocrine cells of the gastrointestinal mucosa differ in type and distribution according to the different regions of the gut
The behavioral differences of the argyrophil cell number found in the gastric mucosa of obese patients are not at all surprising
Summary
The etiology of obesity, a serious medical condition that affects an increasingly large number of individuals, is unknown it is believed to be multifactorial [1]. Some of the gastrointestinal regulatory peptides have been reported to be associated with satiety, and the 28-amino acid peptide ghrelin, mainly produced by neuroendocrine cells of the gastric mucosa, has been associated with a positive metabolic balance [2]. Neuroendocrine cells producing these peptides are present in the different segments of the gut. Over the last three decades there has been a major worldwide increase in the incidence of metabolic disturbances that characterize the so-called metabolic syndrome (MS) [4,5] This phenomenon appears to be linked to the significant increase of obesity in the population. Since our previous results have shown that the specific type of ghrelin-producing cells of the gastric body behaved differently in patients with morbid obesity [7], we decided to study the full population of argyrophil cells from the body and antropyloric regions of the stomach of morbidly obese patients with and without MS
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