why is obesity more dangerous for men than women?
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a new study from researchers at york university gives the skinny on why men are more likely to suffer from obesity related conditions, such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
the research, which appears in the journal iscience, uncovered “striking” differences between the cells that build blood vessels in the fatty tissues of male mice compared to that of females.
“people have used rodent models to study obesity and the diseases that are associated with obesity — like diabetes — but they’ve typically always studied male rodents, because females are resistant to developing the same kinds of diseases,” said tara haas, study lead and professor at york’s school of kinesiology and health science. “we were really interested in exploring that difference because, to us, it spoke of something really fascinating happening in females that protects them.”
previous research by haas and her team discovered that when female mice become obese, they begin to grow a network of new blood vessels that provide oxygen and nutrients to their expanding tissue. male mice, on the other hand, were found to grow considerably fewer blood vessels under the same circumstances.
armed with this knowledge, the researchers used software to help them sort through thousands of genes with a focus on those connected to blood vessel growth. that found that processes associated with the proliferation of new blood vessels were high in female mice, while those associated with inflammation were high in males.
“it was very striking the extent of inflammation-associated processes that were prevalent in the males,” haas said. “other studies have shown that when endothelial cells have that kind of inflammatory response, they’re very dysfunctional and they don’t respond to stimuli properly.”
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the endothelial cells found in females displayed a continuing resilience even when subjected to the stress of a long-term, high-fat diet. “the findings from our study can help researchers to get a better understanding of why obesity manifests differently in men and women,” said alexandra pislaru, co-author of the study and a phd student at york university.
to get a closer look at how these endothelial cells behave, researchers removed them from their subjects and studied them in the lab. “even when we take them out of the body where they don’t have the circulating sex hormones or other kinds of factors, male and female endothelial cells still behave very differently from each other,” haas said.
female endothelial cells were found to replicate faster, while male endothelial cells were more sensitive to inflammatory stimulus. comparing these findings to previously published data sets, the team found that aged mice had endothelial cells with a more inflammatory profile than those found in females.
“you can’t make the assumption that both sexes are going to respond to the same series of events the same way,” said haas, who plans to incorporate human endothelial cells into future study. “this isn’t just an obesity-related issue — i think it’s a much broader conceptual problem that also encompasses healthy aging.
“one implication of our findings is that there will be situations where the treatment that is ideal for men is not going to be ideal for women and vice-versa.”
in 2018, roughly one in four canadian adults, or 7.3 million people, reported a height and weight that classified them as obese, according to statistics canada. another 9.9 million were classified as overweight — meaning that 63.1 per cent of the canadian population faces increased health risks due to excess weight. the proportion of adults that were obese or overweight was higher among men than women (69.4 per cent vs. 56.7 per cent) and a higher percentage of men than women were found to be obese in every age category from age 20 onward.
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dave yasvinski is a writer with healthing.ca
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