Given that dermal fibrosis is associated with a loss of subcutaneous adipocytes both in SSc patients and in a mouse model for SSc (Lee et al., 2014a; Marangoni et al., 2015), here we have determined whether SSc and AA monocytes are also altered in their ability to differentiate into lipid-containing, FABP4+ cells which for simplicity we refer to as ALCs. The gene discussed is FABP4; the disease is systemic sclerosis.