ABSTRACT
Obesity-related complications such as type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease represent a significant disease burden. As people gain weight, white adipose tissue mass expands to store energy-rich triglycerides. By contrast to optical clearing and whole tissue immunolabelling protocols previously described in mice, the protocol reported uses inexpensive, simple-to-make and non-hazardous solutions which are compatible with different light sheet confocal microscopes, enabling the analysis of human adipose tissue morphology and neural innervation. Subcutaneous adipose tissue biopsies were obtained from the left iliac fossa, using a non-diathermy surgical biopsy method, under local anaesthesia. Participants were positioned in the supine position on a surgical couch. Acquisition and initial image processing were performed using ZEN black software, stitching was performed in Arivis software (Arivis) and further image processing in Fiji and ZEN lite.
