Obesity is a medical condition, defined by WHO as an abnormal or excessive accumulation of fat that can compromise health [4]. Energy imbalance in which energy intake is greater than energy expenditure is the primary cause of visceral or central obesity, as excess energy is stored as triglycerides within adipocytes, which increase in size (hypertrophy phynotype), and number (hyperplasic phenotype), or both [83,84]. By accumulating excess energy, adipocytes become hypertrophic, which causes the release of free fatty acids into the circulation (lipotoxicity), adipocytes change their immunological balance, which promotes, with adipose tissue resident immunes cells (macrophages), the production and the circulating levels of proinflammatory cytokines and decreases the concentration of anti-inflammatory adipokines, such as adiponectin [85,86,87,88]. These changes in adipose tissue lead to the development of chronic state of low-grade inflammation that secondarily generates obesity-related complications, commonly known as metabolic syndrome. This syndrome includes insulin resistance, hyperglycemia type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), cardiovascular diseases, dyslipidemia (decreased concentration of cholesterol and triglycerides), steatosis, fibrosis, hypertension, heart attack [84,87]. The literature strongly suggests that flavonoids demonstrate an important biological effect on obesity, as demonstrated by their ability to lower fat mass, lipid droplets in the liver, and total triglycerides/cholesterol in both in vitro and in vivo models.
This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/molecules26103014