Lipidology, Volume 2, Issue 1 (March 2025) – 2 articles

Background/Objectives: Firefighters have an elevated risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD). Thus, it is vital to determine areas of health associated with the development of CVD that need improvement in the firefighter population, such as circulating lipids and arterial stiffness. The purpose of this study was to assess the potential relationship of lipid and lipoprotein metrics with measures of arterial stiffness in full-time firefighters in the southeastern United States. Methods: Twenty male full-time firefighters underwent a fasted blood draw to assess circulating lipids. Resting arterial stiffness was then assessed via pulse wave velocity (PWV) using an aortic measure. To determine the linear relationships between arterial stiffness and lipid measures of interest, a series of bivariate correlations were conducted as appropriate. The outcome variable was PWV measured continuously in m/s. The predictor variables were total cholesterol (TC), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), small dense LDL-C (sdLDL-C), and triglycerides (TG) measured in mg/dL. All analyses were carried out using SPSS version 29 (α = 0.05). Results: TG levels were positively and moderately correlated with PWV (r_s = 0.497, p = 0.026). No other significant relationships were detected between PWV and the remaining variables TC (r_s = 0.104, p = 0.664), HDL-C (r_s = −0.328, p = 0.158), LDL-C (r_s = 0.184, p = 0.436), or sdLDL-C (r_s = 0.330, p = 0.155). Conclusion: Higher TG levels are associated with higher PWV and thus, arterial stiffness. Management of circulating TG may be an important consideration in maximizing arterial health and minimizing CVD risk. Full article

Background/Objectives: Metabolic diseases in humans, such as obesity or type 2 diabetes, arise from defects in the body’s ability to take in and store nutrients such as carbohydrates and triglycerides. Previous studies in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, have identified SR proteins, mRNA splicing factors that regulate splice-site selection, as regulating lipid storage in the fly fat body. However, whether SR proteins function in other tissues to regulate nutrient metabolism is not known. Methods: We focused on studying the role of SR proteins in intestines by decreasing their levels in the fly gut and measuring the concentrations of lipids and glycogen. Results: We further characterized the intestinal functions of 9G8, an SR protein, which displayed an increase in organismal lipid levels when knocked down in the intestine but had less triglyceride storage in isolated intestines. Interestingly, decreasing 9G8 in the intestine resulted in increased intestinal expression of five fatty acid synthesis/elongation enzyme genes, as well as four triglyceride lipase genes, which may contribute to the triglyceride phenotypes we observed in 9G8-RNAi flies. Conclusions: These data suggest that 9G8 regulates whole body and intestinal lipid homeostasis by altering the expression of lipid metabolic enzyme genes in the fly intestine. Full article