Franny Jongbloed

153 6 MORBID OBESITY, BARIATRIC SURGERY AND T-CELL AGING These significances were lost after dividing the group into a no MetS (Figure 2B) and a MetS (Figure 2C) group. The CD8 + RTL showed no significant changes over time in either the total obesity (Figure 2D), the no MetS (Figure 2E) or the MetS (Figure 2F) group. Table 3. P- values of the different T-cell differentiation markers of both CD4+ and CD8+ of the different patient cohorts between 0 and 12 months after bariatric surgery Parameter Obesity No MetS MetS CD4 T-cells 0.18 0.24 0.24 CD4 Naive T-cells 0.11 0.15 0.33 CD4 CD31 naive T-cells 0.03 ( ↓ ) 0.15 0.12 CD4 Memory T-cells 0.27 0.24 0.62 CD4 Central-memory T-cells 0.39 0.24 0.80 CD4 Effector-memory T-cells 0.02 ( ↓ ) 0.07 0.07 CD4 EMRA T-cells 0.19 0.83 0.20 CD4 CD28null memory T-cells 0.01 ( ↓ ) 0.15 0.048 ( ↓ ) CD8 T-cells 0.47 0.80 0.15 CD8 Naive T-cells 0.78 0.90 0.53 CD8 CD31 naive T-cells 0.32 0.24 0.80 CD8 Memory T-cells 0.06 0.15 0.12 CD8 Central-memory T-cells 0.03 ( ↑ ) 0.31 0.12 CD8 Effector-memory T-cells 0.045 ( ↓ ) 0.31 0.15 CD8 EMRA T-cells 0.07 0.19 0.07 CD8CD28null memory T-cells 0.07 0.11 0.15 Obesity = total group of patients. No MetS = all patients without MetS. MetS = all patients with MetS. Significant comparisons are depicted in bold. Arrows indicate direction of significance. DISCUSSION In present study, we show that prior to bariatric surgery morbidly obese patients with metabolic syndrome (MetS) have shorter telomeres than morbidly obese patients without MetS, which is most pronounced in the younger age group. This attrition of telomeres is accompanied by a more differentiated T-cell compartment, indicating that MetS results in accelerated aging of T-cells. After surgery, this more differentiated T-cell status was ameliorated including a partial restoration of telomeres in the first six months