INCREASED OBESE MESSENGER-RNA EXPRESSION IN OMENTAL FAT-CELLS FROM MASSIVELY OBESE HUMANS

Obesity presents a significant challenge to the general health of affl uent nations in terms of the number of people affected, the serious as sociated maladies and the lack of effective treatments(1-3). While com mon wisdom has held that obesity results from 'gluttony and sloth', a number of studies have indicated physiological causes underlying the p athogenesis of obesity(2), with the degree of adiposity having a stron g genetic component(4,5). Recently, the obese gene in the ob/ob mouse was cloned, along with its human homologue(6). The specific production of the obese protein by adipose tissue suggested that it may function in a feedback loop from fat tissue to the hypothalamus to control ene rgy intake and/or energy expenditure, and that it may play a role in t he pathogenesis of human obesity(6-8). In this study we report that ob ese mRNA expression is elevated in ex vivo omental adipocytes isolated from massively obese humans in the absence of an identifiable mutatio n. Therefore, we speculate that this increased expression may suggest that the massively obese are insensitive to the putative regulatory fu nction(s) of the obese gene product.