The actions of oestrogens in adipose are depot dependent: decreasing visceral but not subcutaneous adiposity (Cooke et al. 2001, D’Eon et al. 2005, Bjune et al. 2022); this idea is supported by the observation that global nuclear oestrogen receptor ESR1 (ERα) knockout animals become susceptible to obesity via visceral fat gain (Cooke et al. 2001, Foryst-ludwig et al. 2008, Winn et al. 2023) – a finding consistent with humans where ESR1 expression transcript is negatively correlated with female waist-to-hip ratio indicative of subcutaneous weight gain (Ahmed et al. 2022). The gene discussed is ESR1; the disease is obesity disorder.