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Juan Li [1] and Yu-mei Zhang [1] and Jun-yi Li [1] and Lv Zhu [1] and Hong-xin Kang [1] and Hong-yu Ren [1] and Huan Chen [1] and Ling Yuan [1] and Yi-fan Miao [1] and Mei-hua Wan [1] and Wen-fu Tang [1]

Academic Editor: Young-Su Yi

Department of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan Province 610041, China, scu.edu.cn

Received Aug 11, 2017; Accepted Sep 25, 2017

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

1. Introduction

The rising prevalence of obesity has achieved an unprecedented pandemic around the world. According to the results of Global Burden of Disease 2013 Study (GBD), the prevalence of overweight and obesity combined has risen by 27.5% for adults and 47.1% for children globally during the past three decades. And the number of overweight and obese individuals has increased to 2.1 billion in 2013, which is 2.28 times that of 1980 [1]. Obesity has been related to an increased risk of a series of diseases that involve multiple organ-systems of the body and was estimated to cause 3.4 million deaths, 3.9% of years of life loss, and 3.8% of disability adjusted life years (DALYs) globally in 2010 [2]. The specific mechanisms of obesity leading to diseases have not yet been fully elucidated, but increasing evidences have linked obesity to inflammation according to the work over the past decades.

Obesity-associated inflammation is a chronic, persistent, low-grade inflammation but with insidious effect against multiple organs. Lipid overaccumulation and energy metabolism disorder lead to inflammatory changes of microenvironment of adipose tissue with abundant macrophage infiltration, unbalanced secretion of adipokines, and overexpression of proinflammatory cytokines [3]. Subsequent activation of several inflammation signal pathways by those cytokines helps amplify the inflammatory response, which in turn promotes the expression and secretion of proinflammatory cytokines and eventually leads to inflammatory injuries of all organs without a single one having narrow escape [4]. Studies in recent years have demonstrated the independent role of obesity in the development of a series of diseases, such as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease [5], cardiovascular disease [6, 7], skeletal and muscular disorders [8],...
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

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