Research

Hormonal

Moderate weight loss increases CD3+CD4+ T cells in both abdominal and femoral subcutaneous adipose tissue in adults with adult-onset obesity (AO), but not in those with childhood-onset obesity (CO).

If you developed obesity as an adult, moderate weight loss may trigger an increase in CD4+ T cells in your fat tissue, which could include regulatory T cells that help manage inflammation. If you have been obese since childhood, this specific immune shift may not occur with the same degree of weight loss. This highlights that long-term obesity history creates a 'memory' in fat tissue that is harder to reverse with standard lifestyle changes alone.

ModerateQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
Abdominal and femoral CD3+CD4+ T cells—potentially pro- or anti-inflammatory—increased after weight loss in AO but remained unchanged in CO.
Jessica Murphy et al. · Frontiers in Immunology · 2025

Why this rating

Small sample size, preliminary study, but specific flow cytometry data provided.

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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