Subcutaneous and visceral adipose tissue: structural and functional differences

By M. Ibrahim. Obesity Reviews, 2010

2,065 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Obesity is a heterogeneous disorder. Obese individuals vary in their body fat distribution, their metabolic profile and degree of associated cardiovascular and metabolic risk. Abdominal obesity carries greater risk of developing diabetes and future cardiovascular events than peripheral or gluteofemoral obesity. There are differences between adipose tissue present in subcutaneous areas (SCAT) and visceral adipose tissue (VAT) present in the abdominal cavity. These include anatomical, cellular, molecular, physiological, clinical and prognostic differences. Anatomically, VAT is present mainly in the mesentery and omentum, and drains directly through the portal circulaion to the liver. VAT compared with SCAT is more cellular, vascular, innervated and contains a larger number of inflammatory and immune cells, lesser preadipocyte differentiating capacity and a greater percentage of large adipocytes. There are more glucocorticoid and androgen receptors in VAT than in SCAT. VAT adipocytes are more metabolically active, more sensitive to lipolysis and more insulin‐resistant than SCAT adipocytes. VAT has a greater capacity to generate free fatty acids and to uptake glucose than SCAT and is more sensitive to adrenergic stimulation, while SCAT is more avid in absorption of circulating free fatty acids and triglycerides. VAT carries a greater prediction of mortality than SCAT.

Subfields: Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine, Epidemiology, Physiology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/566ca3104e02e8c9358731c8738e7ef4c27432cb

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Citations in the corpus

Pathophysiology of human visceral obesity: an update. (2013, background): “Taken globally, such early work promoted the conduct of additional imaging body composition/metabolic studies (108, 159, 209, 229, 326, 357, 396) where not only the total quantity of body fat but also the amount of abdominal subcutaneous and visceral adipose tissue would be assessed along with the m”
Forming functional fat: a growing understanding of adipocyte differentiation (2011, background): “Interestingly, despite their histological similarities, subcutaneous and visceral adipose tissues are thought to have distinct depot-specific metabolic function”
FNDC5/Irisin Is Not Only a Myokine but Also an Adipokine (2013, background): “Thus, the fact that SAT secretes much more FNDC5/irisin than other fat deposits is expected after accounting for the ‘‘beneficial’’ role of this type of tissue compared with visceral fat, which has been shown to participate in the metabolic complications associated with weight gain and obesity [35,3”
Dual-Energy X-Ray Absorptiometry for Quantification of Visceral Fat (2012, background): “The exact reason for the propensity of VF to be associated with metabolic and cardiovascular abnormalities remains speculative, but compared to SF, VF is more metabolically active, more sensitive to lipolysis, more resistant to insulin, and has a greater capacity to take up glucose and generate free”