Scientists at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Rockefeller University have found a fat precursor cell that may explain how the number of fat cells might increase and cause obesity. The white adipocyte progenitor cells that have been identified can help us know the factors which control the differentiation and spread of fat. A technique called fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) was brought into use to find out cell populations which could generate fat.

Researchers at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan have concluded that obese people are more prone to heart attacks than smokers. Cholesterol builds up in the coronary arteries. Fat cells produce inflammatory or other chemicals which prompt the plaque to suddenly break. This causes a blood clot, resulting in a heart attack. A total of 111,847 men and women who had experienced a first heart attack were included in the final analysis. They were grouped according to their body mass index (BMI), a measure of body fat based on height and weight. All the patients, regardless of body size, had about the same level of LDL cholesterol. Smoking rates were equal across the group under examination. This means that excess fat causes heart disease in other ways. While patients with the highest body weight lost 12 years of life, on an average, prior to their first heart attack, smoking they took less than 10 years of life before the first heart attack.