Surgical removal of visceral adipose tissue: effects on insulin action.

Many studies have demonstrated that excess of visceral fat has deleterious effects on insulin action. Mainly, it has been shown to be associated with a decrease in hepatic and peripheral insulin sensitivity, which results in a clinical condition also known as insulin resistance. This report describes a novel experimental method that we employed in order to analyze the particular effects of visceral fat on insulin activity. By extracting visceral fat we were able to distinguish the specific role that it plays in insulin action, and to analyze its effects on the gene expression of a variety of fat-derived peptides, which may be considered to be (at least partially) mediators in the development of the metabolic syndrome and possibly diabetes mellitus.