Obesity is a chronic complex disease defined by excessive fat deposits that can impair health. Obesity can lead to increased risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease, it can affect bone health and reproduction, it increases the risk of certain cancers. Obesity influences the quality of living, such as sleeping or moving.

The diagnosis of overweight and obesity is made by measuring people's weight and height and by calculating the body mass index (BMI): weight (kg)/height² (m²). The body mass index is a surrogate marker of fatness and additional measurements, such as the waist circumference, can help the diagnosis of obesity.

Key facts

• In 2022, 1 in 8 people in the world were living with obesity.
• Worldwide adult obesity has more than doubled since 1990, and adolescent obesity has quadrupled.
• In 2022, 2.5 billion adults (18 years and older) were overweight. Of these, 890 million were living with obesity.
• In 2022, 43% of adults aged 18 years and over were overweight and 16% were living with obesity.
• In 2022, 37 million children under the age of 5 were overweight.
• Over 390 million children and adolescents aged 5–19 years were overweight in 2022, including 160 million who were living with obesity.

Causes of overweight and obesity

Overweight and obesity result from an imbalance of energy intake (diet) and energy expenditure (physical activity).

In most cases obesity is a multifactorial disease due to obesogenic environments, psycho-social factors and genetic variants. In a subgroup of patients, single major etiological factors can be identified (medications, diseases, immobilization, iatrogenic procedures, monogenic disease/genetic syndrome).

The obesogenic environment exacerbating the likelihood of obesity in individuals, populations and in different settings is related to structural factors limiting the availability of healthy sustainable food at locally affordable prices, lack of safe and easy physical mobility into the daily life of all people, and absence of adequate legal and regulatory environment.

At the same time, the lack of an effective health system response to identify excess weight gain and fat deposition in their early stages is aggravating the progression to obesity.

Stem Cell therapy in obesity

Over the past two decades, stem cell therapy has become a mainstay of modern medical treatment for a range of diseases affecting every part of the body. Stem cell therapy seems promising as an alternative strategy for managing obesity and related metabolic problems. Stem cells (ADSCs) have received widespread attention, which provides new ideas for the treatment of obesity and various metabolic-related diseases, due to their abundant reserves, easy acquisition, rapid expansion, and multi-directional differentiation potential, low immunogenicity and many other advantages.

The healthy transplanted cells grow and adapt to their new environment, speeding the body's healing process.

It's now been determined that stem cells can also be useful for fighting obesity. Their role is to combat the effects of white adipose tissue (fat), which stores excess energy, by speeding the growth of brown adipose tissue, which actually burns unused energy.