A team of US researchers has uncovered the cellular culprit behind age-related abdominal fat, providing new insights into why our midsections widen with middle age.Published in the journal Science, the findings suggest a novel target for future therapies to prevent belly flab and extend our healthy lifespans.
Preclinical research by City of Hope, one of the largest and most advanced cancer research and treatment organisations in the US, has done this research.
“People often lose muscle and gain body fat as they age — even when their body weight remains the same,” said Qiong (Annabel) Wang, an associate professor of molecular and cellular endocrinology at City of Hope’s Arthur Riggs Diabetes and Metabolism Research Institute.
We discovered aging triggers the arrival of a new type of adult stem cell and enhances the body’s massive production of new fat cells, especially around the belly,” Wang added.
In collaboration with the UCLA laboratory co-corresponding author Xia Yang, the scientists conducted a series of mouse experiments later validated on human cells.
Wang and her colleagues focused on white adipose tissue (WAT), the fatty tissue responsible for age-related weight gain.
While it’s well-known that fat cells grow larger with age, the scientists suspected that WAT also expanded by producing new fat cells, meaning it may have an unlimited potential to grow.