Therapeutic Prospects of Metabolically Active Brown Adipose Tissue in Humans

Content Provider	Open Access Library (OALib)
Author	Matthias J. Betz
Abstract	The world-wide obesity epidemic constitutes a severe threat to human health and wellbeing and poses a major challenge to health-care systems. Current therapeutic approaches, relying mainly on reduced energy intake and/or increased exercise energy expenditure, are generally of limited effectiveness. Previously believed to be present only in children, the existence of metabolically active brown adipose tissue (BAT) was recently demonstrated also in healthy human adults. The physiological role of BAT is to dissipate chemical energy, mainly from fatty acids, as heat to maintain body temperature in cold environments. Recent studies indicate that the activity of BAT is negatively correlated with overweight and obesity, findings that raise the exciting possibility of new and effective weight reduction therapies based on increased BAT energy expenditure, a process likely to be amenable to pharmacological intervention.
ISSN	16642392
Journal	Frontiers in Endocrinology
DOI	10.3389/fendo.2011.00086
Publisher	Frontiers Media
Publisher Date	2011-01-01
Access Restriction	Open
Subject Keyword	Energy expenditure Thermogenesis Obesity Metabolic syndrome Brown adipose tissue Overweight Weight loss
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism