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  • The Effect of Obesity on th...
    Buddenbaum, Nicole Judith

    01/2021
    Dissertation

    Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has recently emerged as the leading international cause of death and resulted in millions of respiratory infections globally. COVID-19 disproportionately affects individuals with obesity, who are at high risk of pulmonary infection, illness and death. Obesity negatively impacts pulmonary function by upregulating select inflammatory pathways. Given the COVID-19 and obesity pandemics, we investigated how obesity impacts the biomolecular landscape of the lungs using a mouse model of obesity. Since inflammation is mediated by derivatives of lipid metabolites, we investigate the pulmonary lipidome to gain insight into the inflammatory status of the lungs with obesity. Additionally, since obesity is associated with impairments in immunometabolic pathways, we investigate the pulmonary transcriptome to understand which pathways are dysregulated in obese lungs at the gene expression level. The results of this study indicate that obese murine lungs have elevated concentrations of pro-inflammatory lipid mediators and inflammatory gene transcripts.