Association between Serum Chemerin Concentrations and Clinical Indices in Obesity or Metabolic Syndrome: A Meta-Analysis

Objective Chemerin is a novel adipokine. Previous research has investigated the association between chemerin and clinical indices in patients with obesity or metabolic syndrome (MS), although the results obtained have been inconsistent. We conducted a meta-analysis to investigate the association between chemerin and clinical indicators of diabetes, MS and obesity with obesity or MS subjects. Design and Methods Studies were identified by searching the PubMed, the Cochrane Library, EMBASE and CNKI, databases beginning with the original report in July 2007 until the end of May 2013. For each variable, summary correlation coefficients were estimated using random-effects or fixed-effect meta-analysis with 95% confidence interval (CI) performed by STATA software. Results A total of eight studies with 20 clinical variables (total n = 1787) met the inclusion criteria. The meta-analyse of diabetes markers showed that FSI ( r s  = 0.26; 95% CI = 0.21–0.31; P = 0.000), 2HPG ( r s  = 0.06; 95% CI = 0.01–0.12; P = 0.030) and HOMA-IR ( r s  = 0.178; 95% CI = 0.019–0.337; P = 0.028) were positively correlated with chemerin, however, FPG ( r s  = 0.03, 95% CI = −0.02 to 0.08, P = 0.240) and HbA1c ( r s  = −0.05; 95% CI = −0.24–0.15; P = 0.641) were not significantly correlated with chemerin. The meta-analyses of MS and obesity markers indicated that TG, TC, CRP BMI, TBF%, WC, WHR and Leptin were positively correlated with chemerin, nevertheless, SBP, DBP, LDL-C, HDL-C, ALT and r-GT were not significantly correlated, adiponectin was negatively correlated. Sensitivity analysis was performed and the summary results did not change significantly. Conclusions The results suggest that chemerin in patients with obesity or MS may be associated with obesity, imbalances in lipid and diabetes metabolism and insulin resistance. Chemerin played an important role in the pathophysiology of obesity and MS.