Abdominal Obesity and the Endocannabinoid System: From Basic Aspects to Clinical Management of Related Cardiometabolic Risk

This internationally renowned author team provides a unique and thorough analysis and distillation of the endocannabinoid system and its relationship to abdominal obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. The endocannabinoid system (ECS) plays an important role in cardiometabolic risk, as well as modulating energy balance, feeding behavior, hepatic lipogenesis, and perhaps glucose homeostasis. Evidence suggests that the ECS is overactive in human obesity and dyslipidemia.

Critical to the management of cardiometabolic risk, this new, timely book provides practical overviews and management guidance on many important topics, including:

• abdominal obesity and the metabolic syndrome
• the endocannabinoid system and energy balance: functions and dysfunctions
• abdominal obesity, the EC system, and cardiometabolic risk

JEAN-PIERRE DESPRÉS is Professor at the Division of Kinesiology of the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at Université Laval, Québec, Canada. He received his Ph.D. in Exercise Physiology from Université Laval and then pursued a post-doctoral training at the Department of Medicine of the University of Toronto. Dr. Després is Director of Research at the Québec Heart Institute in Québec City and holds the position of Scientific Director of the International Chair on Cardiometabolic Risk, a multi-disciplinary academic organisation based at Université Laval. Dr. Després has been the Editor for the International Journal of Obesity from 1992 to 2000, and he is currently a member of the editorial boards of several scientific journals He also serves on the board of numerous organisation and has been the recipient of many awards. Dr. Després has published more than 480 papers in peer-reviewed journals and has written 50 book chapters.

VINCENZO DI MARZO is Research Director at the Istituto di Chimica Biomolecolare, Pozzuoli (Naples), Italy, and Adjunct Associate Professor at Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, USA. Dr. Di Marzo received his first degree in chemistry from the University of Naples ＂Federico II＂, in Italy, and his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the Imperial College of Science. Technology & Medicine, London, UK. Among his many achievements, Dr. Di Marzo was the principal investigator of a Human Frontier in Science Organization grant and past president of the International Cannabinoid Research Society, and founded the Endocannabinoid Research Group, in which several laboratories working on endocannabinoids in the Naples area converge. He has coauthored over 340 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals. In 2007 he received the Mechoulam Award for ＂his outstanding contributions to cannabinoid research＂.