Leptin in Joint and Bone Diseases: New Insights

Leptin is an adipokine with pleiotropic actions that regulates food intake, energy metabolism, inflammation and immunity, and also participates in the complex mechanism that regulates skeleton biology, both at bone and cartilage level. Leptin is increased in obesity and contributes to the “low-grade inflammatory state” of obese subjects causing a cluster of metabolic aberrations that affects joints and bone. In this review, we report the most recent research advances about the role of leptin in bone and cartilage function and its implication in inflammatory and degenerative joint diseases, such as osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis.