Obesity is a multifactorial disorder often associated with many important
diseases such as diabetes,
hypertension and other
metabolic syndrome conditions. Argyrophil
cells represent almost the total
population of
endocrine cells of the
human gastric mucosa and some
reports have described changes of specific types of these
cells in
patients with
obesity and
metabolic syndrome. The present study was designed to evaluate the global
population of argyrophil
cells of the
gastric mucosa of morbidly obese and dyspeptic non-obese
patients. Gastric
biopsies of antropyloric and oxyntic
mucosa were obtained from 50 morbidly obese
patients (BMI >40) and 50 non-obese
patients (17 dyspeptic
overweight and 33 lean individuals) and processed for
histology and Grimelius
staining for argyrophil
cell demonstration. Argyrophil
cell density in the oxyntic
mucosa of morbidly obese
patients was higher in
female (238.68 ± 83.71
cells/mm2) than in
male patients (179.31 ± 85.96
cells/mm2) and also higher in
female (214.20 ± 50.38
cells/mm2) than in
male (141.90 ± 61.22
cells/mm2) morbidly obese
patients with
metabolic syndrome (P = 0.01 and P = 0.02, respectively). In antropyloric
mucosa, the main difference in argyrophil
cell density was observed between
female morbidly obese
patients with (167.00 ± 69.30
cells/mm2) and without (234.00 ± 69.54
cells/mm2)
metabolic syndrome (P = 0.001). In conclusion, the present results show that the number of gastric argyrophil
cells could be under
gender influence in
patients with
morbid obesity. In addition, gastric argyrophil
cells seem to behave differently among
female morbidly obese
patients with and without
metabolic syndrome.