Comment on: Lassenius et al. Bacterial Endotoxin Activity in Human Serum Is Associated With Dyslipidemia, Insulin Resistance, Obesity, and Chronic Inflammation. Diabetes Care 2011;34:1809 1815
Lassenius et al. (1) have shown that high serum endotoxin activity is associated with components of metabolic syndrome. An important observation in their analysis is that most diabetic patients with high serum lipopolysaccharide (LPS) activity had elevated serum triglyceride and low HDL cholesterol concentrations and that serum LPS activity correlated positively with C reactive protein, a marker for low grade inflammation. The data presented is impressive; however, the source of endotoxemia was not clearly postulated. Also the exact composition of the diet consumed by the subjects was not mentioned. We think this information is significant because research has shown that certain diets induce inflammation and LPS production. Our studies showed that a high fat, high carbohydrate meal (HFHC,
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