Increased cutaneous blood flow but impaired post-ischemic response of nutritional flow in obese children

It is well known that cardiovascular risk factors and dyslipidemia along with obesity can be identified early in life. Serum lipids and lipoproteins influence skin vessel reactivity in adults. The purpose of this study was to investigate the cutaneous microcirculation and its correlation to dyslipidemia in obese children. Thirty-four obese children and an equal number of age- and sex-matched healthy children were enrolled in this study. Laser Doppler flowmetry and dynamic capillaroscopy were performed to measure total cutaneous blood flow and nutritional blood flow, respectively. A significantly higher cutaneous baseline flow and peak flow after a 1-min arterial occlusion was noticed in obese group as compared to normal control. Results of dynamic capillaroscopy revealed values of resting capillary blood cell velocity that did not differ from controls but a significantly lower peak CBV after a 1-min arterial occlusion in obesity. Plasma lipids examination showed a high triglycerides and low high density lipoprotein cholesterol levels in obesity. Pearson analysis detected no significant correlations between pCBV, baseline flow and peak flow and dyslipidemia in obesity. These results may be explained by the fact that the duration of dyslipidemia in our study population was not long enough to cause vascular damage or the dyslipidemia was not pronounced enough to have an impact on skin vessel activity tests. It is also possible, that the combination of methods used in the present study was not sensitive enough to detect an existing correlations between flow values and high triglycerides/low HDL-cholesterol values in the obese group. Our results suggest that all the responses of the cutaneous microcirculation were mainly due to physiological compensatory rather than pathological reactions in young obese children. The results of cutaneous microcirculatory assessment in obese children provide follow-up parameters for assessing the risk of cardiovascular diseases later in life. Copyright (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd.