Is metabolic character different between men and women with gallstone disease?

There are a cluster of metabolic syndrome, that include obesity, high level of fasting plasma glucose, hypertriglyceridemia and hypertension, which is closely associated with the increased morbidity and mortality caused by several of the most common diseases including diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, cancer and gallstone disease.

However, there are regional and ethic variables in incidence and metabolic risk factors of gallstone disease. No study explores it in china has been reported.

A research article to be published on April 21, 2009 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology addresses this question. The research team led by Professor Tang from Center of Infectious Diseases, Division of Molecular Biology of Infectious Diseases, National Key Laboratory of Biotherapy (Sichuan University), West China Hospital of Sichuan University carried out a study in a check-up unit in a university hospital in Chengdu city to study the incidence and metabolic risk factor of gallstone disease. As various researches indicated old age and female sex are susceptible to gallstone disease, the article investigate the relationship of metabolic disorders and gallstone disease.

The prevalence of gallstone disease among the study subjects was 10.7% . The reported prevalence of gallstone disease is approximately 3.6% in Japan and 4.3-5.0% in Taiwan. The present study, in accordance with reports from western countries and other regions of Asia, showed that an older age, which may lead to exposure to many other risk factors, and female sex, which may have increasing risk of biliary cholesterol secretion causing cholesterol super saturation of bile by pregnancy and estrogen, are significant risk factors for gallstone disease.

The present analyses showed a positive association between DM and gallstone disease in men but not in women and hypertriglyceridemia or obesity only showed a positive association with gallstone disease in women. There were disparate findings about DM, hypertriglyceridemia and obesity in different sexes with gallstone. These results demonstrate men have different metabolic character from women in gallstone disease patients, which may provide more information for investigating the true pathological mechanism of gallstone disease.

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