Higher differentiation of circulating monocytes into
metabolically activated macrophages (MMe) in dyslipidemia.
Since the population of MMe has been recently described, there is of
interest to consider different subpopulation levels based on the
expression of one, two or three metabolic markers. When we compared MMe
obtained from culture from dyslipidemia and from healthy subjects, we
found that the percentage of differentiated MMe from the group with
dyslipidemia is higher than the percentage from the control group (Fig
5A) when macrophages were evaluated with 2 (p= 0.0249, 2.71%,
2.05%-3.31% vs 3.41%, 2.3%-5.08%, median and IQR) or 3 metabolic
markers (p= 0.0340, 2.08%±1.14% vs 2.88%±1.35%, arithmetic mean and
SD). Moreover, in dyslipidemia subjects, we observed a positive
correlation between the BMI and the percentage of MMe (p= 0.0401, r=
0.4217; Fig 5B). Nevertheless, there was no relationship between the
monocyte derived-MMe percentage and blood lipid levels either in
dyslipidemia patients (NS; Fig 5C) or control subjects. Despite an
expected relationship between ABCA1
median fluorescence intensity (MFI)
and HDLc levels (Fig 5D), no significant correlation was observed
between these parameters in dyslipidemia subjects (p= 0.9133).
Interestingly, there was a positive correlation between ABCA1 MFI and
LDLc concentrations (p= 0.0019, r= 0.5897; Fig 5D). Regarding
macrophages M1 and M2 monocytes differentiated in presence of GM-CSF,
LPS and IFN-γ or M-CSF and IL-4, respectively, we found no difference in
the percentages of neither M1 nor M2 macrophages, between controls and
patients with dyslipidemia (NS; Fig 5E).