Introduction: Overweight status should not be considered merely an aesthetic concern; rather, it can incur health\r\nrisks since it may trigger a cascade of events that produce further fat tissue through altered levels of circulating\r\nsignaling molecules.\r\nThere have been few studies addressing the effect of overweight status on the physiological functions of stem\r\ncells, including mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), which are the progenitors of adipocytes and osteocytes and are a\r\nsubset of the bone marrow stromal cell population.\r\nMethods: We decided to investigate the influence of overweight individuals� sera on in vitro MSC proliferation and\r\ndifferentiation.\r\nResults: We observed that in vitro incubation of bone marrow stromal cells with the sera of overweight individuals\r\npromotes the adipogenic differentiation of MSCs while partially impairing proper osteogenesis.\r\nConclusions: These results, which represent a pilot study, might suggest that becoming overweight triggers further\r\nweight gains by promoting a bias in the differentiation potential of MSCs toward adipogenesis. The circulating factors\r\ninvolved in this phenomenon remain to be determined, since the great majority of the well known pro-inflammatory\r\ncytokines and adipocyte-secreted factors we investigated did not show relevant modifications in overweight serum\r\nsamples compared with controls.
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