The Term of Excess Weight Should be Replaced with Excess Fat Tissue in Human Body
Mehmet Rami Helvaci, Elif Helvaci, Emine Helvaci, Yusuf Aydin, Leyla Yilmaz Aydin, Alper Sevinc, Celaletdin Camci, Abdulrazak Abyad, Lesley Pocock.
Introduction: Background: Atherosclerosis may be the main cause of aging and shortened survival.
Methods: All patients with sickle cell diseases (SCD) were included.
Results: We studied 222 males and 212 females with similar ages (30.8 vs 30.3 years, p>0.05, respectively). Smoking (23.8% vs 6.1%, p<0.001), alcohol (4.9% vs 0.4%, p<0.001), transfused red blood cells (RBC) in their lives (48.1 vs 28.5 units, p=0.000), disseminated teeth losses (5.4% vs 1.4%, p<0.001), ileus (7.2% vs 1.4%, p<0.001), stroke (12.1% vs 7.5%, p<0.05), chronic renal disease (CRD) (9.9% vs 6.1%, p<0.05), cirrhosis (8.1% vs 1.8%, p<0.001), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (25.2% vs 7.0%, p<0.001), coronary heart disease (18.0% vs 13.2%, p<0.05), leg ulcers (19.8% vs 7.0%, p<0.001), and clubbing (14.8% vs 6.6%, p<0.001) were all higher in males.
Conclusion: As an accelerated atherosclerotic process, hardened RBC-induced capillary endothelial damage initiating at birth terminates with multiorgan insufficiencies in early decades in SCD. As the most common cause of CRD, diabetes mellitus (DM) may actually be one of the atherosclerotic endpoints of the pancreas. Although atherosclerotic consequences are common in SCD, we have detected no case of DM probably due to lower body mass indexes. So excess fat may be much more significant than smoking, alcohol, or other chronic inflammatory or infectious processes for atherosclerosis. So the term of excess weight should be replaced with the term of excess fat tissue since there are nearly 33 kg of excess fat tissue between the lower border of normal weight and and upper border of overweight in adults.
