Research

Hormonal

Weight loss in obese individuals fails to resolve visceral adipose tissue (VAT) inflammation because senescent CD153+ PD-1+ CD4+ T cells persist and continue to produce osteopontin, maintaining a chronic inflammatory loop despite fat mass reduction.

If you have been obese for a long time, simply losing weight may not fully restore your metabolic health because your body retains 'senescent' immune cells that keep you inflamed. To mitigate this, focus on strategies that reduce chronic inflammation (like exercise and anti-inflammatory diets) in addition to weight loss, as weight loss alone may not clear these persistent immune cells.

ModerateQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
Mechanistically, CD153+ PD-1+ CD4+ T cells are long-lived and not easily eliminated, even after weight reduction. Their continued presence maintains a self-sustaining chronic inflammatory loop via production of large amounts of osteopontin.
Kohsuke Shirakawa et al. · PLoS ONE · 2017

Why this rating

The study is an animal model (mice) study; while mechanistically detailed, it does not directly prove human clinical outcomes.

Source

Negative legacy of obesity

Kohsuke Shirakawa et al. · PLoS ONE · 2017

DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0186303

mechanism_onlyCited 34×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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