A team of researchers at the IRCM in Montréal led by Rémi Rabasa-Lhoret, in collaboration with Jérôme Ruzzin from the University of Bergen in Norway, found a link between a type of pollutants and certain metabolic complications of obesity. Their breakthrough, published online by The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, could eventually help improve the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cardiometabolic risk associated with obesity, such as diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease.

Although obesity is strongly linked to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes, a subset of obese individuals, termed "metabolically healthy but obese", appears relatively protected from the development of such cardiometabolic complications. IRCM researchers are studying the factors that seem to protect obese individuals who remain metabolically healthy, in an attempt to find therapeutic avenues to prevent complications for others who are at risk.