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Scientists are trying to find out why some overweight people stay healthy. (archive picture)
Keystone
A Zurich research team has created an atlas of changes in the cells of overweight people. According to ETH Zurich, the atlas could help to find out why some overweight people become ill and others do not.
People who are very overweight have a greater risk of diabetes, high blood pressure or high cholesterol. However, not all overweight people develop such metabolic diseases, as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) explained in a press release on Wednesday. Around a quarter of all severely overweight people remain healthy.
In order to find biological indicators that increase the risk of metabolic diseases, the ETH researchers, together with scientists from the University of Leipzig, collected cells from overweight people.
They found that fat lying directly under the skin is less problematic than visceral fat, which lies deep in the abdominal cavity. The researchers showed that the cells in the visceral fat tissue of people with metabolic diseases undergo significant functional changes.
They also found differences between the cells of women and men. A certain type of progenitor cell is therefore only present in the visceral fat of women. According to the researchers, this could explain differences in the development of metabolic diseases between men and women.
05.02.2025, 10:08
