People with recognizable brown fat are less likely to suffer from heart and metabolic conditions

Brown fat is that magic stuff you would want more of. Unlike white fat, which stores calories, brown fat burns energy and scientists hope it may be a key way to treat new obesity. But it has not long been clear whether people with enough brown fat have better health. For one thing, it has been difficult to even identify such people because brown fat is hidden deep inside the body.

Now, a new study in Natural Medicine offers strong evidence: among more than 52,000 participants, those with recognizable brown fat were less likely than their peers to suffer from a heart condition and metabolic activity ranging from type 2 diabetes to coronary artery disease, which is a leading cause of death in the United States.

The study, the largest of its kind in humans, confirms and extends the health benefits of brown fat suggested by previous studies.

For the first time, it appears to be associated with a lower risk of certain conditions. These findings make us more confident about the ability to target brown fat for therapeutic benefit. “

Paul Cohen, Albert Resnick, MD, Associate Physician and Chief Physician, Rockefeller University Hospital

Valuable resource

Although brown fat has been studied for decades in babies and new animals, it was only in 2009 that scientists realized it can also be found in some adults, usually around the neck and shoulders. Since then, researchers have scrambled out to study the non-fat cells, which have the power to burn calories to produce heat in cold conditions.

Large-scale studies of brown fat, however, have become impossible because this material appears only on PET scans, a specific type of medical imaging. “These scans are expensive, but more importantly, they use radiation,” says Tobias Becher, the study’s first author and former Clinical Scholar at Cohen’s lab. “We don’t want to give a lot of healthy people that.”

A physicist, Becher came up with an alternative. Across the street from his lab, thousands of people visit the Sloan Kettering Memory Cancer Center each year to get through PET scans for cancer assessment. Becher knew that when radiologists look for brown fat on these scans, they regularly make a note of it to make sure no tumors are mistaken. “We realized that this could be a valuable resource to get us started by looking at brown fat at a grassroots level,” says Becher.

Protective fat

In collaboration with Heiko Schoder and Andreas Wibmer at Sloan Kettering Memorial, the researchers reviewed 130,000 PET scans from more than 52,000 patients, and found the presence of brown fat in nearly 10 percent of people. leth. (Cohen notes that this figure appears to be overestimated because patients have been told to avoid cold exposure, exercise, and caffeine, all of which are thought to be increases brown fat activity).

There were a number of common and harmful diseases that were less common among people with known brown fat. For example, only 4.6 percent had type 2 diabetes, compared with 9.5 percent of people with no recognizable brown fat. Similarly, 18.9 percent had excess cholesterol, compared to 22.2 percent in those without brown fat.

In addition, the study revealed three additional conditions where people with brown fat have a lower risk: hypertension, congestive heart failure, and coronary artery disease – links not seen in previous studies.

Another surprising finding was that brown fat could alleviate the negative health effects of obesity. In general, obese people are at increased risk for heart and metabolic conditions; but the researchers found that, among obese people with brown fat, the frequency of these conditions was similar to the frequency of non-obese people. “They almost seem to be protected from the harmful effects of white fat,” Cohen says.

More on a powerhouse burning energy

It’s not yet clear what strategies brown fat may contribute to better health, but there are some of those things. For example, brown fat cells consume glucose to burn calories, and it is possible that this lowers blood glucose levels, a major risk factor for developing diabetes.

The role of brown fat is more secretive in other conditions such as hypertension, which is closely linked to the hormonal system. “We are considering the potential for brown fat to increase the consumption of glucose and burn calories, and possibly actually play a role in hormonal signaling to other organs, “Cohen says.

The team plans to further study brown fat biology, including by looking for genetic changes that may explain why some people have more than others – first measures that may improve therapeutic approaches to stimulate brown fat activity to treat obesity and related conditions. .

“Everyone’s natural question is, ‘What can I do to get more brown fat?’ Cohen says. “We don’t have a good answer to that yet, but it will be an exciting place for scientists to study in the years to come.”