Advances in body composition: a 100-year journey

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-20-2024

Publication Title

International Journal of Obesity

Abstract

Knowledge of human body composition at the dawn of the twentieth century was based largely on cadaver studies and chemical analyses of isolated organs and tissues. Matters soon changed by the nineteen twenties when the Czech anthropologist Jindřich Matiegka introduced an influential new anthropometric method of fractionating body mass into subcutaneous adipose tissue and other major body components. Today, one century later, investigators can not only quantify every major body component in vivo at the atomic, molecular, cellular, tissue-organ, and whole-body organizational levels, but go far beyond to organ and tissue-specific composition and metabolite estimates. These advances are leading to an improved understanding of adiposity structure-function relations, discovery of new obesity phenotypes, and a mechanistic basis of some weight-related pathophysiological processes and adverse clinical outcomes. What factors over the past one hundred years combined to generate these profound new body composition measurement capabilities in living humans? This perspective tracks the origins of these scientific innovations with the aim of providing insights on current methodology gaps and future research needs.

First Page

177

Last Page

181

DOI

10.1038/s41366-024-01511-9

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS