Transient dietary intervention induces healthy adipose tissue expansion and metabolically healthy obesity in mice

As obesity progresses, dynamic tissue remodeling of adipose tissue occurs over time, i.e., adipocyte hypertrophy, chronic inflammation, and interstitial fibrosis. Some obese individuals exhibit healthy adipose tissue expansion, characterized by modest inflammation and fibrosis despite adipocyte hypertrophy, resulting in “Metabolically Healthy Obesity (MHO)”. Our research has revealed that MHO can be induced by temporary weight loss during the development of obesity. We fed high-fat fed (HFD) or standard diet (SD) to eight-week-old male C57BL/6J mice to establish a Weight Cycling (WC) protocol. The WC group was fed HFD for 8 weeks, followed by SD for 2 weeks for weight loss, then HFD again for an additional 6 weeks.The control group was fed HFD continuously for 14 weeks from 10 weeks of age. We collected epididymal adipose tissue samples from the mice.