It is recognized that low grade inflammation is a key player in the development of atherosclerosis and insulin resistance (Haslam, James 2005). Circulating levels of inflammatory markers such as high sensitive C-reactive protein (hsCRP) and interleukin (IL)-6 are found to be increased in subjects with cardiovascular disease (CVD) and type 2-diabetes (Dandona, Aljada & Bandyopadhyay 2004). We and others have shown that obesity, and in particular abdominal obesity, is associated with persistent increased level of inflammatory markers (Bruun et al. 2007, Christiansen et al. 2010a) . Thus this low grade of inflammation may represent "the common soil" for the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis and insulin resistance and represent the link between these metabolic disturbances and obesity.