Research

Hormonal

Moderate (~10%) weight loss achieved through diet and exercise reduces pro-inflammatory M1-like macrophages in abdominal subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) in adults with adult-onset obesity (AO), but fails to alter these immune cell profiles in those with childhood-onset obesity (CO).

If you developed obesity as an adult, moderate weight loss (around 10%) through diet and exercise may help reduce inflammation in your abdominal fat. However, if you have been obese since childhood, the same level of weight loss might not change the inflammatory state of your fat tissue, even if you lose weight and improve blood markers like insulin. This suggests that long-term obesity history creates a 'memory' in fat tissue that is harder to reverse with standard lifestyle changes alone.

ModerateQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
Abdominal CD68+CD206- ‘pro-inflammatory’ macrophages were slightly higher in AO than CO at baseline but declined in AO only, equalizing between groups after weight loss.
Jessica Murphy et al. · Frontiers in Immunology · 2025

Why this rating

Small sample size (n=8-14 per group), preliminary nature stated by authors, but rigorous flow cytometry methodology.

Source

The age of obesity onset affects changes in subcutaneous adipose tissue macrophages and T cells after weight loss

Jessica Murphy et al. · Frontiers in Immunology · 2025

DOI 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1601847

clinical_trial · n=27Cited 2×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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