Healthy individuals and dyslipidemic patients show similar levels of metabolic monocytes.
One common characteristic of obesity and metabolic syndrome is the chronic inflammatory state . It has been documented the macrophages in these pathologies undergo a phenotypic switch from anti-inflammatory to inflammatory phenotype. To determine whether diseases such as dyslipidemia are conditioning circulating monocytes to express metabolic markers, we evaluated the percentages of these cells from subjects with elevated lipid levels (triglycerides >150 mg/dl, total cholesterol >200 mg/dl) and compared them with the percentages from healthy subjects. We evaluated the cell populations with 2 (ABCA1, CD36) and 3 (ABCA1, CD36, PLIN2) phenotypic markers and found that metabolic monocytes percentages do not differ between healthy individuals and those with dyslipidemia (not statistically significant (NS); Fig 2A), and CD14 expression seems not to have influence in this context (NS; Fig 2B). Additionally, relative expression of PPAR-γ mRNA in monocytes from healthy individuals and patients with dyslipidemia was similar (NS; Fig 2A). Furthermore, we did not find a relationship between the percentages of metabolic monocytes and lipid levels (NS; Fig 2C) or body mass index (NS; Fig 2D) in subjects with dyslipidemia.