Brown Fat Transplants May Spur Weight Loss
Brown Fat Transplants May Spur Weight Loss
Brown fat appeared to blunt some of the effects of the high-fat diet. Transplanted mice maintained their weight and blood sugar better than those who didn’t get transplants. And the more brown fat they got, the stronger the benefits seemed to be.
How is brown fat working? Further testing on transplanted mice showed they had higher levels of proteins and molecules that control how the body handles blood sugar.
The study is published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
How soon could the technique be tried in humans?
“I think it’s a ways off,” Goodyear says, “but I think that the studies that we’ve done here really support the idea that it could work.”
Other researchers say the study is interesting, but they aren’t yet convinced that brown fat will someday become a treatment for obesity or diabetes.
“Its purpose is to produce heat and fight cold exposure. It’s certainly not there to combat obesity. It has no purpose in evolution to do that,” says Andre Carpentier, MD, a professor of diabetes and physiology at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, Canada.
Carpentier studies brown fat in people, but he was not involved in the current research.
Carpentier says if more studies show that brown fat can safely be increased in the body, it could one day become a tool to fight weight gain and diabetes.
But he says it’s important to keep in mind that even under the best circumstances, the effects of brown fat are likely to be modest.
“You may end up burning a little bit more calories at the end of your day, but it’s not going to be anything close to what you can achieve by doing exercise and diet,” Carpentier says.
Brown Fat Transplants May Spur Weight Loss
'Dramatic Effects' continued...
Brown fat appeared to blunt some of the effects of the high-fat diet. Transplanted mice maintained their weight and blood sugar better than those who didn’t get transplants. And the more brown fat they got, the stronger the benefits seemed to be.
How is brown fat working? Further testing on transplanted mice showed they had higher levels of proteins and molecules that control how the body handles blood sugar.
The study is published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Human Testing on the Horizon
How soon could the technique be tried in humans?
“I think it’s a ways off,” Goodyear says, “but I think that the studies that we’ve done here really support the idea that it could work.”
Other researchers say the study is interesting, but they aren’t yet convinced that brown fat will someday become a treatment for obesity or diabetes.
“Its purpose is to produce heat and fight cold exposure. It’s certainly not there to combat obesity. It has no purpose in evolution to do that,” says Andre Carpentier, MD, a professor of diabetes and physiology at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, Canada.
Carpentier studies brown fat in people, but he was not involved in the current research.
Carpentier says if more studies show that brown fat can safely be increased in the body, it could one day become a tool to fight weight gain and diabetes.
But he says it’s important to keep in mind that even under the best circumstances, the effects of brown fat are likely to be modest.
“You may end up burning a little bit more calories at the end of your day, but it’s not going to be anything close to what you can achieve by doing exercise and diet,” Carpentier says.
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