The Study
Adipose Tissue Free Fatty Acid Storage In Vivo: Effects of Insulin Versus Niacin as a Control for Suppression of Lipolysis
This study compared two ways to slow down fat release in the body — one with insulin and one with niacin — and saw that fat storage in fat cells was about the same either way. It doesn't prove insulin makes you fat or doesn't make you fat; it just says, under these exact conditions, insulin doesn't do more than niacin at storing fat.
Analysis score
Maximum 90 for a randomized controlled trial.
Where the score came from
Scientists tested if insulin makes fat cells suck up more fat from the blood, or if it’s just because insulin lowers the amount of fat floating around.
Where does this study sit?
Reviews of RCTs (Meta-analyses)
Max 100Randomized Trials
Max 90Reviews of Cohort Studies
Max 85Cohort Studies
Max 72Reviews of Case-Control Studies
Max 63Case-Control Studies
Max 58Cross-Sectional & Case Series
Max 50Expert Opinion
Max 554 / 100
Quality score
Participants are randomly assigned to treatment or control groups, minimizing bias. The gold standard for testing whether an intervention causes an effect.
Key takeaways
Summary
Based on the study abstract and findings.
- 1Yes — this means insulin doesn’t magically make fat cells store more fat; it just reduces fat release, and fat storage follows that change.
- 2When insulin and niacin both lowered blood fat to the same level, fat storage in belly and thigh fat was almost identical — about 0.20–0.25 units — and both were about 3x lower than when no treatment was given.
Score breakdown, methodology, conflicts of interest, evidence analysis & raw study data
Publication
Journal
Diabetes
Year
2015
Authors
Asem H. Ali, M. Mundi, C. Koutsari, D. Bernlohr, M. Jensen
Related Content
Claims (3)
When insulin levels rise, it reduces the breakdown of fat in fat cells by suppressing the enzyme hormone-sensitive lipase.
When insulin and niacin reduce fat breakdown to the same degree in healthy individuals, neither causes a greater increase in fat storage under the skin than the other, suggesting that insulin does not uniquely promote fat storage beyond what is expected from reduced fat breakdown.
In human fat tissue, neither insulin nor niacin strongly triggers the ERK1/2 signaling pathway under the conditions studied, indicating that this pathway likely does not play a major role in how free fatty acids are taken up by fat cells in the body.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making health decisions.