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A large new study has provided strong evidence that people with brown fat in their bodies are less likely to suffer from various health problems.
“For the first time, it reveals a link to a lower risk of certain conditions,” says one of the researchers, Rockefeller University Hospital doctor Paul Cohen.
“These results make us more confident about the potential for targeting brown fat for therapeutic benefit.”
Brown fat or brown adipose tissue (BAT) is especially common in hibernating mammals and newborns. BAT helps mammals regulate temperature – when we are really cold, the large amounts of mitochondria in this type of fat tissue burn for energy and produce heat. In fact, it’s the iron-rich mitochondria that give brown fat its characteristic color.
It wasn’t until 2009 that scientists discovered that some adult humans also had brown fat in their bodies, usually around their necks and shoulders.
Many studies in mice have examined the benefits of brown fat, but in humans, research has been more murky until recently. Having brown fat appears to improve a person’s metabolism and can even help with weight loss (although the latter probably isn’t that simple).
“The natural question everyone asks 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 space for scientists to explore in the years to come.”
Looking at a large dataset of 52,487 participants undergoing PET / CT scans for cancer assessment, the team found evidence of brown fat in just under 10% of cases (5,070 people).
The researchers think this might be an underestimate due to the conditions the participants were in – they were told to avoid cold exposure, exercise, and caffeine before the scans, all of which have been linked to brown fat activity.
About 4.6% of people with brown fat also had type 2 diabetes, compared to 9.5% in the “ no brown fat ” group. A similar result was seen in abnormal cholesterol results – 18.9% of people with brown fat had abnormal cholesterol, compared to 22.2% of people without brown fat.
Hypertension, congestive heart failure, and coronary artery disease also showed small positive differences in the brown fat groups compared to groups without brown fat.
“These results were supported by improved blood sugar, triglyceride and high density lipoprotein values,” the team writes in its new paper.
While the numbers here are exciting, there is no evidence yet that brown fat makes you immune to any of these conditions – but there is a link to risk reduction that is worth exploring.
What was really interesting was that brown fat was especially protective in obese people. Obese patients who had brown fat had a similar prevalence of these metabolic and heart diseases as non-obese people.
“It almost looks like they’re protected from the harmful effects of white fat,” Cohen says.
“Taken together, our results highlight a potential role for MTD in promoting cardiometabolic health,” the researchers note in their article.
It’s important to note that the data the researchers were working on was from cancer assessments at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, which means this is not a representative sample of the general population.
Nonetheless, the study has given a fascinating new look at the role of brown fat in the human body and will hopefully lead to even more discoveries in the future.
“We’re looking at the possibility that brown adipose tissue is doing more than just consuming glucose and burning calories, and maybe actually participating in hormonal signaling to other organs,” Cohen says.
The research was published in Nature medicine.
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