ESPE Abstracts

Background: Obesity is characterized by an increase in fat mass caused by an increase in adipocyte number and adipocyte size and is often associated with adipose tissue (AT) dysfunction contributing to metabolic impairment. It is suspected that adipocyte progenitor cells play an important role during healthy and obesity-related AT expansion. Studies in adults showed that the stroma vascular fraction (SVF) of AT is composed of different progenitor cell subpopul...

Here we identified and characterized a heterozygous tandem duplication at the ASIP (agouti-signaling protein) gene locus causing ubiquitous, ectopic ASIP expression in a female index patient with extreme childhood obesity. In patient-derived adipose tissue samples, we observed pronounced differentiation of stroma-vascular fraction (SVF) cells into adipocytes in the patient compared to normal control cells. We further found reduced mitochondrial maximum respir...