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Biologic Effect of Childhood Obesity on Adult Weight

Fat cells change in number or mass depending on a person's age:

* Fat cells themselves multiply during two growth periods: early childhood and adolescence. Overeating during those times, then, increases the number of fat cells. (Some people are also just born with more fat cells.)
 
* After adolescence, fat cells tend to increase in mass rather than quantity, so that adults who overeat and gain weight tend to have larger fat cells, not more of them.

Losing weight in adulthood, then, reduces the size of the fat cells but not their number, so weight loss becomes much more difficult for adults who become overweight when fat cells were replicating in childhood. (Such fat-cell growth in adolescence poses a greater risk for being obese in adulthood than in toddlerhood.)

Review Date: 12/31/2002

Reviewed By: Harvey Simon, MD, Editor-in-Chief, Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Physician, Massachusetts General Hospital.

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Hyperplastic growth can also occur in adulthood (in both humans and rats). When adipocytes fill with lipid and get to a critical size, precursor cells are stimulated to differentiate, and an increase in adipocyte number results. This critical size probably does not occur with moderate overfeeding unless the overfeeding is of long duration. In addition, there are probably individual differences in the size that will result in new adipocyte formation. Once new adipocytes are formed, they remain throughout life and only a reduction in size of the cell is possible. This increased number of adipocytes has far-reaching consequences for the treatment and prevention of obesity.