ReviewDisease models & mechanisms2012
The evolution of human adiposity and obesity: where did it all go wrong?
Review in Disease models & mechanisms, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 46 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
46 citing papers in PubMed, 132 citations in OpenAlex.
- Beyond Deterministic Fetal Programming: Intrauterine Exposures and the Multifactorial Origins of Adiposity.Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity · 2026Review
- Unravelling obesity: from leptin to glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists.Journal of applied genetics · 2026Review
- Recalled Adverse Childhood Experiences Predict Behavioral Traits Associated With an Accelerated Life History in Cebu, Philippines.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2026Article
- Histological Divergence Underlying Globular Body Shapes in Ornamental Goldfish.Zoological studies · 2026Article
- Scarce and unpredictable, yet obesogenic: modeling the impact of food insecurity on adiposity in mice.Obesity (Silver Spring, Md.) · 2025Article
- Reframing Diabetes Prevention: From Body Shaming to Metabolic Reprogramming.American journal of lifestyle medicine · 2025Review
- Use of caffeine in 19,660 randomly selected U.S. adults: the role of overweight and obesity.Frontiers in nutrition · 2025Article
- Reverse epidemiology of obesity paradox: Fact or fiction?Physiological reports · 2024Review
- Anti-obesity effects of olivetol in adult zebrafish model induced by short-term high-fat diet.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Natural selection and human adiposity: crafty genotype, thrifty phenotype.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Comparative analysis of deeply phenotyped GBM cohorts of 'short-term' and 'long-term' survivors.Journal of neuro-oncology · 2023Article
- The Long-Term Consequences of Early Life Exposure to Tsunami and Conflict on Adolescents in Sri Lanka.Asia-Pacific journal of public health · 2023Article
- The urgency in proposing the optimal obesity cutoff value in Indonesian population: A narrative review.Medicine · 2022Review
- Suppressive Effect of Fraxetin on Adipogenesis and Reactive Oxygen Species Production in 3T3-L1 Cells by Regulating MAPK Signaling Pathways.Antioxidants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Prefrontal Cortical Control of Activity in Nucleus Accumbens Core Is Weakened by High-Fat Diet and Prevented by Co-Treatment with N-Acetylcysteine: Implications for the Development of Obesity.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Article
- Patients' acceptance of obesity as a chronic disease: a qualitative study in Lebanon.BMJ open · 2022Article
- Article
- Role of the Endocannabinoid System in the Adipose Tissue with Focus on Energy Metabolism.Cells · 2021Review
- Antimicrobial Dosing in Specific Populations and Novel Clinical Methodologies: Obesity.Clinical pharmacology and therapeutics · 2021Review
- Affective Temperament and Glycemic Control - The Psychological Aspect of Obesity and Diabetes Mellitus.Diabetes, metabolic syndrome and obesity : targets and therapy · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Because obesity is associated with diverse chronic diseases, little attention has been directed to the multiple beneficial functions of adipose tissue. Adipose tissue not only provides energy for growth, reproduction and immune function, but also secretes and receives diverse signaling molecules that coordinate energy allocation between these functions in response to ecological conditions. Importantly, many relevant ecological cues act on growth and physique, with adiposity responding as a counterbalancing risk management strategy. The large number of individual alleles associated with adipose tissue illustrates its integration with diverse metabolic pathways. However, phenotypic variation in age, sex, ethnicity and social status is further associated with different strategies for storing and using energy. Adiposity therefore represents a key means of phenotypic flexibility within and across generations, enabling a coherent life-history strategy in the face of ecological stochasticity. The sensitivity of numerous metabolic pathways to ecological cues makes our species vulnerable to manipulative globalized economic forces. The aim of this article is to understand how human adipose tissue biology interacts with modern environmental pressures to generate excess weight gain and obesity. The disease component of obesity might lie not in adipose tissue itself, but in its perturbation by our modern industrialized niche. Efforts to combat obesity could be more effective if they prioritized 'external' environmental change rather than attempting to manipulate 'internal' biology through pharmaceutical or behavioral means.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.