Increased serum visfatin in patients with metabolic syndrome and carotid atherosclerosis

Summary Objective Visfatin is a newly identified adipocytokine and recent studies indicated that visfatin may have potential proinflammatory effect. However, its pathophysiological role in the metabolic syndrome (MetS) is not fully understood. In this study we investigated whether serum visfatin levels is altered in patients with the MetS, and compared the levels of visfatin between patients with and without carotid plaques. Design and method A total of 139 patients with MetS and 105 controls were included. The patients were further divided into two groups: 40 with carotid plaques and 99 without carotid plaques. Serum visfatin was measured by using enzyme immunoassay method and carotid intimal‐media thickness (IMT) was measured by ultrasound in all subjects. Results Serum visfatin was elevated in both MetS patients with and without carotid plaques compared to controls (log visfatin: 1·14 ± 0·14 vs. 0·99 ± 0·17 ng/ml vs. 0·93 ± 0·23 ng/ml, P