The imbalance between energy intake and expenditure is the main cause of excessive overweight and obesity. Technically, obesity is defined as the abnormal accumulation of ≥20% of body fat, over the individual's ideal body weight. The latter constitutes the maximal healthful value for an individual that is calculated based chiefly on the height, age, build and degree of muscular development. However, obesity is diagnosed by measuring the weight in relation to the height of an individual, thereby determining or calculating the body mass index. The National Institutes of Health have defined 30 kg/m2 as the limit over which an individual is qualified as obese. Accordingly, the prevalence of obesity in on the increase in children and adults worldwide, despite World Health Organization warnings. The growth of obesity and the scale of associated health issues induce serious consequences for individuals and governmental health systems. Excessive overweight remains among the most neglected public health issues worldwide, while obesity is associated with increasing risks of disability, illness and death. Cardiovascular diseases, the leading cause of mortality worldwide, particularly hypertension and diabetes, are the main illnesses associated with obesity. Nevertheless, the mechanisms underlying obesity-associated hypertension or other associated metabolic diseases remains to be adequately investigated. In the present review, we addressed the association between obesity and cardiovascular disease, particularly the biological mechanisms linking obesity and hypertension.

Acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is a common disease with serious consequences in mortality and cost. Here we aim to screen the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) as biomarkers for early diagnosis of AMI. The microarray data of AMI was downloaded from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), including two independent types of research GSE66360 and GSE62646. The DEGs between control and processed samples were screened out by using limma package. Meanwhile, we performed functional analysis of GO terms and/or KEGG pathways to observe the enriched pathways of the DEGs. Finally, regression analysis of raw data was performed by using packet affyPLM in R language. Dataset GSE62646 contained 53 DEGs (FC log2>1 and P value <0.05) between first-day samples from 28 STEMI patients and control samples from 14 patients without myocardial infarction history. There were 12 up-regulated and 41 down-regulated genes, 35 DEGs annotated. In GSE66360, a total of 3034 DEGs between 32 AMI patients and 38 healthy persons were obtained, including 1861 up-regulated and 1173 downregulated DEGs. The comparison of the DEGs in two datasets revealed four common up-regulated genes (EGR1, STAB1, SOCS3, TMEM176A). In enrichment analysis, STAB1, SOCS3, EGR1 involved in metabolic regulation and signaling pathways related to coronary artery disease with a characteristic change (P < 0.05). The DEGs, especially the four up-regulated common genes, could serve as biomarkers for early diagnosis of AMI. Additionally, the relative biological pathways these DEGs enriched in might provide a good reference to explore the molecular expression mechanism of AMI. J. Cell. Biochem. 119: 650-658, 2018. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. KEY WORDS: ACUTE MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION; DIFFERENTIALLY EXPRESSED GENES; FUNCTIONAL ANNOTATION; BIOMARKERSA cute myocardial infarction (AMI) can cause heart failure, an irregular heartbeat, cardiogenic shock, or cardiac arrest [Risk et al., 2017]. It is the major cause of morbidity and mortality in the general population. This well-known heart attack is generally classified into ST-elevation MI (STEMI) and non-ST elevation MI (NSTEMI) [Moe and Wong, 2010]. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), annually, more than 3 million people are estimated with acute STEMI and that and more than 4 million suffers from NSTEMI [Organization, 2005;Reed et al., 2017]. In the modern society, the aging of population and comorbidities (e.g., obesity and metabolic syndrome) become more prevalent. All theses public health burden are the high risks of AMI. Besides, other health problems caused by ischemic heart disease are likely to increase even further [Yasuda and Shimokawa, 2009].The main treatments for STEMI include thrombolysis and percutaneous coronary intervention [Bates and Menees, 2012]. Hereinto, the percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) should be performed within 90-120 min, if not, thrombolysis, preferably within 30 min of arrival to the hospital, is recommended [Bassand et al., 2005]. All these treatments need is extremely a time ...