Emil Jørsboe, Phil Kubitz, Julius Honecker+12 more · 2025 · medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory · added 2026-04-24
White adipose tissue dysfunction has emerged as a critical factor in cardiometabolic disease development, yet the cellular microstructure and genetic architecture of adipocyte morphology remain poorly Show more
White adipose tissue dysfunction has emerged as a critical factor in cardiometabolic disease development, yet the cellular microstructure and genetic architecture of adipocyte morphology remain poorly explored. We introduce Adipocyte U-Net 2.0, an advanced deep learning method for the semantic segmentation of adipose tissue histology, enabling analysis of over 27 million adipocytes from 2,667 individuals. Our approach revealed that adipocyte hypertrophy associates with metabolic dysfunction, including increased fasting glucose, glycated hemoglobin, leptin, and triglycerides, with decreased adiponectin and HDL cholesterol levels. Through the largest genome-wide association study of adipocyte size to date (N Our findings demonstrate the utility of deep learning for adipocyte phenotyping at scale and provide novel insights into the genetic basis of adipocyte morphology and its relationship to metabolic disease. Show less