Adult obesity phenotypes and their clinical relevance: Narrative review

Abstract

Obesity, a multifactorial disease caused by the alteration of the function of adipose tissue causing chronic and systematic inflammation. Considered as one of the main problems facing society in this century, with an increase in its worldwide incidence becoming a health problem, due to its growth, it has been considered as a global epidemic, named as globesity in 2011 by the World Health Organization (WHO). Obesity, together with metabolic syndrome, helps us to describe 4 groups of phenotypes without a clear consensus; the reviewed groups include metabolically healthy obese, metabolically obese normal weight, normal weight obesity and sarcopenic obese. The objective of this review was to describe each of the metabolic phenotypes and to identify the most common pathologies associated with each of these phenotypes by conducting a narrative review of the literature. Conclusion: This work has shown that there are no unified protocols for the diagnosis of each phenotype of obesity, also, each phenotype has particular characteristics in terms of detection and presentation in body composition, however, they are associated with the imminent development of metabolic syndrome, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes.