Leptin Therapy Does Not Affect Inflammatory Markers

Abstract

(1) have performed a well-controlled dietary study dem-onstrating that an isocaloric low-fat diet decreases urine and serumandrogens, and possibly by doing so lowering prostate cancer risk. Theauthors suggest that lower testosterone concentrations may be primarilydue to lower cholesterol concentrations. Decreased testosterone pro-duction also may have been due to the decreases in LH and FSH thatwere observed by the authors. LH pulsatility was not accounted for inthis study and may have contributed to lower testosterone concentra-tions. The effect of macronutrient variation on the regulation of pituitaryhormones suggests a role of peripheral hormones that regulate energyhomeostasis, such as leptin (2). When healthy men were fasted for 3 d,serum testosterone and pulsatile LH decreased in association with adecrease in pulsatile leptin (3). Essentially though, leptin concentrationshould not change if total energy intake remains constant, as occurredin this study (3). Interestingly, in healthy women, it has been shown thata high-carbohydrate/low-fat diet over 24 h increases diurnal leptinconcentrations relative to a high-fat/low-carbohydrate diet (4). The dietused by Wang