IL6 and obesity due to melanocortin 4 receptor deficiency: As inflammation is a common feature of obesity we measured plasma levels of two cytokines associated with the progression of CVD, IL-6, and TNF-α (Ridker et al., 2000; Gao et al., 2007; Empana et al., 2010; Ammirati et al., 2012), in our 4 groups of mice.