Association between serum soluble tumor necrosis factor-α receptors and early childhood obesity.

This study aimed to characterize the inflammatory cytokine profiles and further validate the significantly different cytokines in the serum obtained from obese children aged 36-48 months. Four obese children and four lean controls were randomly selected for inflammatory cytokine array assay, in which two cytokines [soluble tumor necrosis factor-α receptors (sTNFRs) 1 and 2] were found to be significantly different. Both cytokines (sTNFR1 and sTNFR2) were then further validated through enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in 61 obese children and 52 lean children. ELISA results revealed that serum sTNFR1 level in obese children significantly increased (p = 0.003), whereas sTNFR2 did not change significantly (p = 0.069). Stratified analysis by gender showed that only obese girls presented increased sTNFR1 (p = 0.005) and sTNFR2 (p = 0.049) levels. We conclude that serum sTNFR1 is elevated in early childhood obesity. Moreover, serum sTNFR1 and sTNFR2 are associated with obese girls but not obese boys, thereby suggesting that serum sTNFRs in early childhood obesity may be sex related.