Metabolic benefits of walking in obese patients

Project summary

Obesity is a major public health issue today. More than 800 million people worldwide are affected, with around 2.8 million deaths a year attributed to the condition. In France, 18.1% of adults have a body mass index (BMI) greater than or equal to 30 kg/m².

Obesity is a multifactorial disease, often associated with co-morbidities such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease or hypertension. Treatment is based on a multidisciplinary approach: therapeutic patient education (TPE), drug therapy (notably GLP-1 agonists), and bariatric surgery for the most severe cases (sleeve, bypass). Physical activity, in particular slow-paced active walking, is a key therapeutic lever in the treatment of obesity.

This project aims to study the metabolic effects of a supervised walking program in obese patients, before and after bariatric surgery. The OBEMAR project aims to precisely quantify the effects of adapted physical activity, in this case walking, in people suffering from obesity, before and after bariatric surgery. The integration of artificial intelligence tools will enable us to model the overall impact of walking in obese people before and after surgery, in order to establish predictive markers of the benefit of walking.

The primary objective of this study is to assess the cardio-metabolic effects (body composition, inflammation (cytokines, miRNA), metabolomics, lipidomics) after 6 months of walking (150 minutes/week minimum) and then at 6 and 12 months post-surgery.
The secondary objectives of this study will be to assess the impact of walking on psychological well-being, the participants' level of physical fitness (distance covered in walking tests, resting metabolism, muscular strength, cardiorespiratory capacity), carotid compliance by vascular ultrasound and adipose tissue levels (brown, muscular, thoracic, cardiac, abdominal) by imaging.

Finally, artificial intelligence will be used to model the impact of walking on the patient's overall health, enabling us to identify new markers of the benefits of walking before and after bariatric surgery.