الفهرس 
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Abstract
Summary The incidence of obesity continues to increase, especially in industrialized countries, and is a serious concern because it increases the risk of many diseases as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer. In obese subjects, the accumulation of abdominal visceral fat is accompanied by metabolic disorders such as diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia, and hypertension, and results in atherosclerotic vascular diseases. There are many gastrointestinal and hepatic diseases for which obesity is the direct cause (e.g., nonalcoholic fatty liver disease) or is a significant risk factor, such as reflux esophagitis and gallstones and neoplasia of the esophagus, colon, and pancreas. There are increased odds ratios or relative risks of several gastrointestinal complications of obesity: gastro esophageal reflux disease, erosive esophagitis, Barrett’ s esophagus, esophageal adenocarcinoma, erosive gastritis, gastric cancer, diarrhea, colonic diverticular disease, polyps, cancer, liver disease including nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma, gallstones, acute pancreatitis, and pancreatic cancer. Moreover, in the general population, increasing body mass index (BMI) is significantly associated with gastric ulcers. Dysregulation of bioactive molecules secreted from excess visceral fat is proposed to contribute to the progression of metabolic disorders. Adiponectin is one of these molecules, which was isolated from the human adipose tissue cDNA library. Adiponectin exists abundantly in the circulation and has anti-diabetic, anti-atherogenic, and anti-inflammatory properties. It was hypothesized that low serum adiponectin levels in obese subjects may leads to metabolic disorders associated with obesity. The anti-inflammatory