Mitochondrial oxygen metabolism as a prognostic marker in obesity?

Obesity is a chronic nutritional and metabolic disorder characterized by, among other things, severe overweight and diagnosed in people with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 kg/m² or higher. In addition to macroscopic changes, it leads to functional disorders in the mitochondria, the so-called energy-producing “power plants” of the cells. For patients with severe obesity, laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy (LSG) is a potential treatment option.

With the aim of analysing changes in both weight and body composition up to one year after LSG, UKJ staff from the Translational Septomics Research Group and the Department of General, Visceral, and Vascular Surgery examined 48 patients in a clinical study. In addition, they used the non-invasive “COMET” technique to evaluate the oxygen metabolism of the mitochondria and compared the values with those of 40 healthy subjects. While significant weight loss and a decrease in relative fat mass were observed six months after the procedure, no significant differences in mitochondrial oxygen metabolism were found between obese patients and healthy control subjects.
Interestingly, obese patients with preoperatively elevated mitochondrial metabolism values showed greater weight loss one year after surgery than obese patients with preoperatively lower values.

This is the first study to non-invasively examine mitochondrial oxygen metabolism in the long term after bariatric surgery. Further studies with larger cohorts are needed to confirm the results.

Engelmann M, Götze J, Baumbach P, Neu C, Settmacher U, Ardelt M, Kissler H, Coldewey SM (2025) Mitochondrial oxygen metabolism as a potential predictor of weight loss after laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy for class III obesity. Front Endocrinol (Lausanne). 2025 Jan 7:15:1488175. doi: 10.3389/fendo.2024.1488175. eCollection 2024. PMID: 39839477.