Adiponectin is well recognized as an antidiabetic and antiatherogenic adipokine, but the relationship between adiponectin levels and plaque composition is still unknown. Marso et al. sought to examine whether there is an association between adiponectin levels and extent of intravascular ultrasound (IVUS)-defined coronary atherosclerosis and IVUS-Virtual Histology (VH) plaque in human coronary arteries. For that purpose, plaque composition was evaluated in 185 patients enrolled in an IVUS substudy of the Diabetes Genome Project who underwent coronary angiography and IVUS. The study reported a negative correlation between adiponectin levels and quantitative IVUS measures of coronary atherosclerosis. Adiponectin levels were also negatively associated with plaque lipid content in IVUS-VH analysis. Moreover, when patients were classified according to quartiles of adiponectin levels, low adiponectin levels were associated with IVUS-derived pathological intimal thickening in patients without diabetes but not in patients with diabetes. The authors concluded that in a cohort of patients with coronary artery disease, low adiponectin levels are associated with increased plaque volume, lipid-rich plaque, and IVUS-derived pathological intimal thickening in patients without diabetes, which suggests an antiatherogenic role for adiponectin in the early stages of lesion development.
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