First, when studying a body depot, such as the abdominal compartment, a practical challenge is how best to match slice positions across individuals with varying body habitus.
Upon standardization, such a method could be utilized to distinguish differences among obese subjects across the span of gender, age, ethnicity, and BMI categories in both adipose and lean tissue amounts, types, and distribution in any body depot.
Lastly, catecholamine mediated leg free fatty acid release is lower in women than in men, whereas free fatty acid release from the upper body depots is comparable[38].
There is growing recognition that adipose tissue stored in different body depots may have differential impacts on health.
However, uniquely in our study with the aid of two representative case control study groups that included non-pregnant women, we have been able to understand the divergent changes in insulin sensitivity in the different body depots during pregnancy.
In the same study, the authors observed significant differences in blood flow between sexes within specific regions of AT after meal ingestion, suggesting that a greater fat storage in lower body depots occurs in women (Romanski et al., 2000).
61, 84, 85 The movement from a few slices toward whole body imaging was further advanced with the recognition in 1998 that single-slice results from various body depots had significant variability in total and VAT across the range of BMI, which could not be predicted from determination of SAT or standard anthropometry.
While it is expected that weight loss reduces fat and lean mass from various body depots, the mechanistic basis for such changes, whether adaptive or maladaptive, has not been clarified, and existing studies have utilized isotope-labeled tracer techniques that are not applicable outside highly sophisticated research settings.
Also in agreement with these observations, Guo and co-workers reported that in the lower extremities, catecholamine mediated free fatty acid release is lower in women than in men, while no significant differences between men and women were observed in free fatty acid release from upper body depots (Guo et al., 1997).
We hypothesize that the preferential storage of fat in central rather than 'safer' lower-body depots in obese pregnancy leads to lipotoxicity.
Non-pregnant women with lower-body obesity are more efficient at storing systemic NEFAs in lower-body adipose depots than women with upper-body obesity [ 28], and this could be interpreted as 'pear-shaped' women being efficient at storing fat in lower-body depots that provide protection against metabolic risk and endothelial dysfunction.
