Á. González-Domínguez, J. Domínguez-Riscart, M. Millán-Martínez, A. M. Lechuga-Sancho, R. González-DomínguezBioFactors2023, DOI: 10.1002/biof.1948
Although growing evidence points to a pivotal role of perturbed metal homeo-stasis in childhood obesity, sexual dimorphisms in this association have rarelybeen investigated. In this study, we applied multi-elemental analysis to plasmaand erythrocyte samples from an observational cohort comprising childrenwith obesity, with and without insulin resistance, and healthy control children.Furthermore, a wide number of variables related to carbohydrate and lipidmetabolism, inflammation, and sex hormones were also determined. Childrenwith obesity, regardless of sex and insulin resistance status, showed increasedplasma copper-to-zinc ratios. More interestingly, obesity-related erythroidalterations were found to be sex-dependent, with increased contents of iron,zinc, and copper being exclusively detected among female subjects. Our find-ings suggest that a sexually dimorphic hormonal dysregulation in response toa pathological cascade involving inflammatory processes and hyperinsulinemiacould be the main trigger of this female-specific intracellular sequestration oftrace elements. Therefore, the present study highlights the relevance of geno-typic sex as a susceptibility factor influencing the pathogenic events behindchildhood obesity, thereby opening the door to develop sex-personalizedapproaches in the context of precision medicine.
