ADIPOQ and endothelial dysfunction: Adiponectin, the most abundant adipokine generated by PVAT (Fesus et al., 2007), may exert its anticontractile effect through hyperpolarisation of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) via AMPK (Weston et al., 2013), and in HFD-fed obese rats, adiponectin improves endothelial dysfunction in the aorta via AMPK activation and eNOS phosphorylation (Deng et al., 2010).