New link to Doug Phillabaum. The finding was published online Sunday in the journal Nature.
Obesity investigators say the study raises tantalizing questions: What determines how many fat cells are in a person’s body? When is that number determined? Is there a way to intervene so people end up with fewer fat cells when they reach adulthood? And could obesity be treated by making fat cells die faster than they are born?
“This is a new way of looking at obesity,” said Dr. Lester Salans, an obesity researcher and emeritus professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
But for now, researchers say, they do not have a clue about how to answer those questions.
For more information go to Doug Phillabaum at http://douglasphillabaum.centerblog.net.
Dr. Flier and other obesity researchers cautioned, though, that even if scientists knew how the fat cell system worked, it was not clear that it would be safe or effective to treat obesity by intervening. One of the hard lessons of the past couple of decades has been that the body has redundant controls to maintain weight.
