Impact of obesity on metabolism in men and women. Importance of regional adipose tissue distribution.

Abstract

A B S T R A C T The distribution of adipose tissue thickness, fat cell weight (FCW), and number (FCN) were studied in four regions in randomly selected middleaged men and women and in 930 obese individuals. Both the obese and the randomly selected men were found to have the largest adipose tissue thickness in the abdominal region. Women, however, showed a relative preponderance for the gluteal and femoral regions. FCW increased with expanding body fat up to a maximal size of -0.7-0.8 ,ug/cell in each region.After this increase in FCW, a more rapid increase in FCN was found.For the same degree of relative overweight, men had higher triglyceride, fasting glucose, and insulin levels; higher sums of glucose and insulin levels during an oral glucose tolerance test; and higher blood pressure. Furthermore, elevated fasting glucose levels (>7.4 mM) occurred twice as often in the males. These differences between males and females persisted even after body fat matching.A male risk profile was seen in women characterized by abdominal obesity (high waist/hip circumference ratio) as compared to women with the typical peripheral obesity. Stepwise multiple regression analyses in both women and men showed the obesity complications to be associated in a first step to waist/hip circumference or body fat and in a second to abdominal fat cell size.It may thus be concluded that: (a) In both obese and nonobese subjects, regional differences exist between the sexes with regard to adipose tissue distribution.Portions of these data were presented at the International Conference on the Adipocyte and Obesity, 28-29 June 1982, Toronto, Canada. Address all correspondence to Dr. Ulf Smith, Department of Medicine II, Sahlgren's Hospital, Sweden. Received for publication 20 August 1982 and in revised form 10 March 1983. (b) Moderate expansion of body fat is mainly due to FCW enlargement, which is subsequently followed by increased FCN. (c) Men and women with a male abdominal type of obesity are more susceptible to the effect of excess body fat on lipid and carbohydrate metabolism.

Relationship of adiponectin to body fat distribution, insulin sensitivity and plasma lipoproteins: evidence for independent roles of age and sex

“…Body mass index (BMI) was calculated as weight (kg)/[height (m)] 2 . The waist-to-hip ratio was calculated as waist circumference (cm)/hip circumference (cm) [41].…”

Improved insulin sensitivity and adipose tissue dysregulation after short-term treatment with pioglitazone in non-diabetic, insulin-resistant subjects

“…Body weight and height were recorded with standard techniques. Waist and hip circumferences were measured as described [22] and WHR calculated. Lean body mass (LBM) was calculated from bioimpedance analysis (BIA-101, Akern, Florence, Italy) [23].…”

Adipose tissue distribution and risk of metabolic disease: does thiazolidinedione-induced adipose tissue redistribution provide a clue to the answer?

“…Compared with small adipocytes, large cells are more insulin-resistant and lipolytic, release more inflammatory cytokines and less adiponectin [24,28], and are more frequently found in people with obesity-related metabolic disorders [29,30]. Therefore, adipose tissue cell composition, expressed as the relative number of large adipose cells in a given fat depot, is an important determinant of the metabolic activity and response to environmental changes of that depot.…”

“…an increase in cell size [1,2]. Studies on adipose tissue cellularity have reported that adipocytes become severely insulin-resistant when filled with more than 1 μg of lipid per cell, and new adipocyte recruitment normally occurs when the lipid content of the cells reaches ∼0.7-0.8 μg/cell [29]. The new cell recruitment may be triggered by a progressively altered secretion of proteins and lipid metabolites from the enlarging adipocytes [24,28], which could act as signalling molecules on the precursor cells in the adipose tissue bed to initiate and regulate adipogenesis.…”