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Apart from diet and physical activity, physiological differences in metabolism could lead to differences in weight gain, the presence of physiological mechanisms in fatty tissue may cause some people to become overweight and others not, despite similarities in lifestyle. Researchers analysed tissue samples from subcutaneous fat taken from the stomachs of women before and after a follow-up period of about ten years.
They discovered the ability of the fat cells to free fatty acids, a process called lipolysis, in the first tissue sample could be used to predict which women would have developed type 2 diabetes by the end of the study. They also found that these women had reduced activity in a small number of specific genes involved in lipolysis.
Lipolysis is the process whereby a fat cell frees fatty acids, which are used as a source of energy by the muscles. Researchers differentiate between basal lipolysis, which is continual, and hormone-stimulated lipolysis, which is triggered in response to an increase in energy requirement. The fat cells from the women who later developed overweight showed high basal but low hormone-stimulated lipolysis, which gave a 3 to 6 times higher risk of weight gain and type 2 diabetes.
The teams first discovered the correlation in a group of 54 women, who gave the first tissue samples between 2001 and 2003 and who were followed up 13 years later. They then repeated the analysis on 28 other women who gave samples in 1998 and were followed up ten years later, with the same results. One of the researchers’ aims is to find ways of identifying individuals who run the risk of developing overweight and type 2 diabetes.
The researchers have developed an algorithm based on simple clinical and biochemical parameters from hundreds of individuals in order to obtain an indirect estimation of the quantity of fatty acids freed by the fat cells and thus predict weight gain.
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