Abstract
Obesity has become a serious health problem with frequent occurrence both in human and animal populations. It is estimated that it may affect over 85% of the human population and 70–80% of horses and cows by 2030. Fat cow syndrome (FCS) is a combination of metabolic, digestive, infectious, and reproductive disorders that affects obese periparturient dairy cows, and occurs most frequently in loose-housing systems, where periparturient and dry cows are fed and managed in one group disregarding the lactation stages. Equine metabolic syndrome (EMS) was named after human metabolic syndrome (MetS) and has insulin dysregulation as a central and consistent feature. It is often associated with obesity, although EMS may occur in a lean phenotype as well. Other inconsistent features of EMS are cardiovascular changes and adipose dysregulation. Laminitis is the main clinical consequence of EMS. MetS holds a 30-years old lead in research and represents a clustering of risk factors that comprise abdominal obesity, dyslipidemia, hypertension, and hyperglycemia (impaired fasting glucose or type 2 diabetes mellitus—T2DM), which are associated with doubled atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease risk, and a 5-fold increased risk for T2DM. The main aim of this review is to provide critical information for better understanding of the underlying mechanisms of obesity-related metabolic dysfunction in animals, especially in cows and horses, in comparison with MetS. Human medicine studies can offer suitable candidate mechanisms to fill the existing gap in the literature, which might be indispensable for owners to tackle FCS, EMS, and their consequences.
Highlights
Obesity is a major concern worldwide due to its increasing prevalence that can be ascribed to the availability of cheap foods, technological advancement, and built environments [1,2,3]
metabolic syndrome (MetS) holds a 30-years old lead in research and represents a clustering of risk factors that comprise abdominal obesity, dyslipidemia, hypertension, and hyperglycemia, which are associated with doubled atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease risk, and a 5-fold increased risk for type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM)
The main aim of this review is to provide critical information for better understanding of the underlying mechanisms of obesity-related metabolic dysfunction in animals, especially in cows and horses, in comparison with MetS
Summary
Obesity is a major concern worldwide due to its increasing prevalence that can be ascribed to the availability of cheap foods, technological advancement, and built environments [1,2,3]. In the setting of caloric overload, abdominal obesity and insulin resistant adipose tissue induce lipolysis, the release of great amounts of free fatty acids that cause hepatic IR in the liver This disturbance induces increased gluconeogenesis, and, hyperglycemia, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) [12,13,14]. The forage sources for horses, such as pastures, paddocks, or hay used for feeding, contain genetically improved grassland species with enhanced nutritious content (https://www.safergrass.org, accessed on 7 September 2021), rich in sugars and starch These risk factors are linked with the higher laminitis rates, and the development of insulin dysregulation (ID) (abnormal insulin metabolism) in horses [18,19,20]. Due to the reported association between chronic diseases such as T2DM and cardiovascular disease, and the disturbances of the circadian rhythm, recently, Zimmet P et al (2019) argued that circadian disruption may play a causative role in MetS, and, proposed the syndrome to be renamed as ‘Circadian Syndrome’ [35]
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