Scientists have discovered why it's hard for people to keep weight off after losing weight
Kyiv • UNN
Swiss researchers have found that fat cells have a “memory” for obesity. Experiments have shown that after losing weight, the cells react more quickly to fatty foods, which leads to weight gain.
Researchers from Switzerland have discovered that fat cells have memory
Swiss scientists have studied fat cells and found that they have a memory for obesity.
Writes UNN with reference to Science Alert.
Details
A team of researchers from ETH Zurich in Switzerland has found out why people who have managed to lose weight have difficulty keeping it off. The scientists conducted experiments based on human tissue analysis and experiments on mice. They found that mammalian fat cells keep track of obesity in a process that regulates the expression (the use of information from genes to synthesize a functional genetic product - ed.) of our genes, known as epigenetics.
The experiment was conducted on mice. The overweight rodents with epigenetic “memory” experienced rapid weight regain when fed fatty foods, compared to control mice that were not overweight.
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Epigeneticist at ETH Zurich Laura Hinte and her colleagues call this phenomenon obesity.
In experiments on mice, researchers have found that losing weight after a significant gain stimulates fat cells to respond even more to high-fat diets in the future, and this is what contributes to weight regain.
Cells do not abandon the “obesity setting” in terms of how genes are “turned off” and “turned on”.
There have been previous studies that have noted a loss of fat cell identity in obese mice. This “cellular identity crisis” may be the reason why normal fat functions normally seen in healthy people are reduced in obese people.
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The researchers also found that signs of “obesity memory” in fat cells were more prevalent in people who had undergone weight loss surgery than in cells from people who had routine, unrelated surgery. But overall, according to Hinte and the team, these results indicate that obesity causes cellular and transcriptional (transfer of genetic information - ed.) changes in adipose tissue that are not eliminated after significant weight loss.
Interestingly, in 2015, obesity was associated with 4 million deaths worldwide, more than two-thirds of which were due to the leading cause of death in the world - heart disease.
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