Obesity is a major health problem for many countries because it is so prevalent and the
association of overweight with many serious physical impairment is evident from numerous studies.
Therefore, research efforts toward elucidation of biological markers for obesity as an effective strategy for prevention will have public health importance.
The objective- of this study was to determine the serum pseudocholinesterase activity levels by sex, age, weight, obesity index and weight change, and also to determine the usage of serum PchE activity as early detection marker of obesity.
Serum PchE activity, weight and height data were measured in 710 healthy adult subjects (533 male, 177 female) and the major results of this study are as follows;
1. The mean of serum PchE activities for male subjects was 6.52±1.37 u/ml, which was significantly higher than that of female subjects (5.72±1.20 u/ml, p<0.001). The range of serum PchE activity was 2.84 u/ml to 14.09 u/ml for males and 3.52 u/ml to 10.43 u/ml for females.
2. The average age of male subjects was 40.2, years old and that of female subjects was 34. 8 years old. In males, the mean of serum PchE activities in each age group appeared statistically different (p<0.05), but this difference seems to be related to weight by sex.
3. There appeared no significant difference in the mean of serum PchE activities in each height group (male p>0.6, female p>0.6) and the correlation coefficient was very low in both sexes with 0.0070 and -0.0706 respectively for males and females.
4. A significant increase in the mean serum PchE activity was found in subjects groups on the basis of the weight in both sexes by one-way variance analysis (male p<0.001, female p<0. 05). But the correlation coefficient between serum PchE activity and weight was relatively low in both sexes as 0.1965 and 0.2687 respectively.
5. Serum PchE activity increased as the degree of obesity increased in both sexes. We found that the difference of the means of serum PchE activities in each obesity group was significantly high (male p<0.001, female p<0.001). Although the degree of obesity didn´t show good correlation with serum PchE activity in both sexes (male 0.2381, female 0.2939), but this correlation coefficient was higher than that of between weight and serum PchE activity.
6. The difference of mean serum PchE activity by weight changes from 1984 to 1988 was statistically significant in each weight change group (p<. 005), but the correlation coefficient was very low (male 0.0999, female 0.1168). The result of a t-test in each group showed that the difference of mean serum PchE activity was significant only between decreasing weight group and the other groups (p<0.01).
7. Although we found that the difference of mean serum PchE activity by weight, obesity and weight changes was statistically significant, the relatively low values of correlation coefficient indicate that the serum PchE activity may not be a useful marker in predicting the risk for obesity.
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