New research looking at the impact of diet on body fat distribution in the UK Biobank cohort has recently been published in Clinical Nutrition by colleagues at Uppsala University. Joel Kullberg, VP Innovation and Patents @ Antaros Medical and Professor @ Uppsala University is one of the co-authors of the publication.
Body fat, also called adipose tissue, in excess has been linked to a variety of metabolic diseases, including type 2 diabetes (T2D) and cardiovascular disease. However, interestingly, body fat distribution (i.e., where the fat is located in the body) has also been strongly associated with various metabolic diseases, independently of total excess body fat. This has suggested that there may be location-specific metabolic effects for different fat depots. Imaging, and particularly Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), offers different ways to precisely quantify different aspects of body fat distribution.
In the published study, liver fat percentage (measured using MRI proton-density fat fraction), inter-muscular adipose tissue (IMAT) percentage, visceral adipose tissue (VAT) volume, and abdominal subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) volume were measured in addition to total adipose tissue volume. By looking at how diet impacted specific body fat depots, this study aimed to investigate how certain dietary substitutions were associated with how body fat is distributed in the body, which is in turn associated with various metabolic diseases.
The study concluded that type of dietary fat may be an important determinant of ectopic fat in humans consuming their regular diet. The findings suggested that plant fat and polyunsaturated fat (PUFA) should be preferred over animal fat and saturated fat (SFA). These findings were corroborated by circulating fatty acids and confirmed and visualised using novel imaging models.
Title: Diet composition, nutrient substitutions and circulating fatty acids in relation to ectopic and visceral fat depots
Authors: Fridén M, Martinez Mora A, Lind L, Risérus U, Kullberg J, Rosqvist F
Find the publication here.