Research
Hormonal
Elevated free fatty acid (FFA) delivery to the liver from visceral and upper body subcutaneous fat depots stimulates hepatic VLDL-triglyceride production, leading to hypertriglyceridemia and low HDL cholesterol, which are independent risk factors for cardiovascular disease.
High levels of fatty acids reaching the liver from abdominal fat stores drive the production of triglyceride-rich lipoproteins, increasing cardiovascular risk. Managing abdominal fat can help mitigate this risk.
StrongSupportsHIGH confidence
Abnormally high levels of FFA presented to the liver stimulate the production of hepatic VLDL-TG (Figure 1) [9,37,44]. Thus, persons with greater amounts of visceral fat are likely to have selectively greater abnormalities in hepatic metabolism.
Why this rating
Supported by multiple citations and the authors' review of the literature.
Source
Fat Depots, Free Fatty Acids, and Dyslipidemia
Jon O. Ebbert et al. · Nutrients · 2013
DOI 10.3390/nu5020498
narrative_reviewCited 349×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Excess visceral fat and upper body subcutaneous fat impair insulin-mediated suppression of free fatty acid (FFA) release, leading to elevated systemic FFA levels that drive hepatic VLDL-triglyceride overproduction and low HDL cholesterol, thereby increasing cardiovascular disease risk.Strong
- Upper body subcutaneous fat is the primary source of excess free fatty acid (FFA) release in upper body obesity, contributing more to systemic FFA levels and metabolic risk than visceral fat itself.Strong
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