A Study of Fecal Calprotectin in Obese Children and Adults

BACKGROUND: Obesity is a complex, medical condition causally contributing to many chronic diseases and a number of efforts have been made to find the associated markers for novel prevention and treatment of obesity. Our study was to evaluate the relationship between gut immune response and obesity and overweight with use of fecal calprotectin (FC) both in adult and children groups. METHODS: Fecal samples were obtained from 74 subjects: 14 non-obese and overweight children (PN), 13 obese and overweight children (PO), 20 non-obese and overweight adults (AN), and 27 obese and overweight adults (AO). FC was measured using a commercial Legend Max quantitative enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (BioLegend). Mann-Whitney U-test was used for statistical analysis. RESULTS: Median FC concentration was 7.9 μg/g (range, 1.9–28.9 μg/g) for PN, 5.0 μg/g (range, 2.6–29.6 μg/g) for PO, 9.5 μg/g (range, 0.8–28.9 μg/g) for AN, and 10.0 μg/g (range, 1.6–25.6 μg/g) for AO, respectively. In both adults and children age groups, the FC showed no statistically significant difference between AO and AN or PO and PN. However, FC showed statistically significant difference (P<0.05) between AO and PO while not significant between AN and PN. CONCLUSION: FC level in AO was significantly higher than that in PO, suggestive of different pathophysiologic mechanism between children obesity and adults obesity.