Relative shrinkage of adipocytes by paraffin in proportion to plastic in human adipose tissue before and after weight loss

Summary: Adipocyte size is a major modulator of endocrine functioning of tissue and methods allowing accurate determination of adipocyte size are important to study energy metabolism. The aim of this study was to relative shrinkage of adipocytes before and after weight loss by adipose tissue from the same subjects embedded in paraffin and plastic. healthy subjects (5 males and 13 females) aged 20-50 y with a BMI of 28- kg/m(2) followed a very low energy diet for 8 weeks. Adipose tissue taken prior to and after weight loss and were processed for paraffin and sections. Parameters of adipocyte size were determined with computer analysis. Mean adipocyte size was smaller in paraffin compared to embedded tissue both before (66 +/- 4 vs. 103 +/- 5 mum, P < 0.001) as weight loss (62 +/- 4 vs. 91 +/- 5 mum, P < 0.001). Relative shrinkage adipocytes in paraffin embedded tissue in proportion to plastic embedded was not significantly different before and after weight loss (73 and respectively). Shrinkage due to the type of embedding of the adipose be ignored when comparing before and after weight loss. Plastic adipose tissue provides more accurate and sensitive results.: