Abstract
Obesity, a disease of Western and developing societies, is spreading at an epidemic pace throughout the world. According to the World Health Organization, obesity is defined as an increase or abnormal accumulation of body fat mass to the extent that an individual’s health will be negatively affected. Being overweight (i.e., Body Mass Index > 25 kg/m2) is considered as a significant risk factor for the development of many chronic diseases. Environmental, behavioral, genetic and biological factors interact to cause obesity. Human obesity can be viewed as a set of phenotypes that evolve over time in a sequence of stages that need to be precisely measured. This presentation provides a clinical viewpoint on some biological processes that may explain some of the stages in the development of human obesity, its chronic maintenance and occurrence of complications, with a main focus on the profound alterations in the biology of white adipose tissue.
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Acknowledgments
The author warmly thanks Dr Joan Tordjman and Dr Raffaella Cancello for their contributions to the iconography and Dr Jean-Louis Nahon and Charmaine Tam for critical reading of the manuscript. Several works presented at this conference are granted by ADAPT, HEPADIP and DIOGENES networks supported by the European Community.
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Clément, K. (2010). Pathological Alteration of Human Adipose Tissue in Obesity. In: Christen, Y., Clément, K., Spiegelman, B. (eds) Novel Insights into Adipose Cell Functions. Research and Perspectives in Endocrine Interactions. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13517-0_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13517-0_1
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