Using Human Fat Tissue to Measure Energy Metabolism in Obesity, Diabetes, and Post-Bariatric Surgery

Study in a Sentence: Scientists use human adipose tissue, or fat tissue, to study how fat cells from people with obesity burn energy at different stages of diabetes and after weight loss surgery.

Healthy for Humans: Understanding how the body uses energy—and accurately detecting when these metabolic processes go wrong—is essential for the effective prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of metabolic diseases like diabetes. This study shows that analyzing metabolic function in patient-derived fat tissue has the potential to provide a more personalized approach to early diagnosis and ongoing monitoring over time in metabolic disease treatment.

Redefining Research: Obesity can lead to insulin resistance, increasing the risk of type 2 diabetes, but how the mitochondria in adipose tissue change their energy use during this process isn’t well understood. Animal experiments often fail to accurately replicate human metabolism, but this new method of measuring energy use in human fat cells offers a better way to understand metabolic dysfunction over time in individuals.