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If a man stays a long time in the cold before being conceived, this has far-reaching consequences. The child then has a greater chance of forming more brown adipose tissue, which has a positive effect on health.
From the outside, you do not see how much brown fat has to anyone. (Photo: Dan Harrelson (CC BY 2.0))
lsl ./ (nda) Anyone with a lot of brown adipose tissue can be happy in our time of unnecessary calories. Because fat cells of this type turn energy into heat, thus protecting against obesity. The more tissue a person has and the more active they are, the less likely they become obese or develop metabolic diseases.
However, the fabric is distributed in different ways. People in cold regions therefore have more than those in hot regions. Today, a research team led by Christian Wolfrum of ETH Zurich has shown that a central course for fabric formation was already taking place prior to conception.
Temperature makes the difference
Humans mainly have white adipose tissue, which provides appropriate curves. Brown adipose tissue, however, is only sparsely distributed along the spine and in the area of the neck and clavicle. Originally, the researchers looked for a correlation with date of birth, as they assumed that babies born in winter would form more brown adipose tissue.
They retrospectively analyzed computer tomographic images created at the University Hospital Zurich of 8400 adult patients. no result. It was only when they considered the timing of the design that they found a connection: people who had been conceived in winter and who had their birthday from July to November therefore had a probability slightly higher than 3.2% of active brown adipose tissue. like the begotten in summer, with birthday from january to june. In addition, people with active brown adipose tissue produced in winter had a lower BMI.
It was only a small difference, but compared to the world population, that would be a lot, says Wolfrum. In addition, the method by which adipose tissue has been measured is not particularly sensitive, that is why they would make a major difference.
Mice Less Thick
And because it's only one of them Correlation, the researchers wanted to study the relationship in the mouse in more detail . For this, they kept the animals before and after procreation at either 23 degrees moderate or 8 degrees cool. Then they examined the offspring. It was found that ambient temperature in mothers had no influence on the formation of brown adipose tissue in juveniles.
On the other hand, the influence on the fathers was clear. The offspring of males, which had been in the cold before conception, had a more active brown adipose tissue than males that had been in temperate temperatures. The former were also better protected against obesity and insulin resistance in a high-fat diet.
The researchers also showed that the temperature had an effect on the spermatozoa. They therefore noted changes in the epigenetic footprint. This refers to genetic markers that influence how genes are read.
It has been known for some time that environmental influences can alter the epigenetic profile of spermatozoa. However, Zurich researchers have now shown for the first time that ambient temperature can also lead to such epigenetic changes as reported in the journal "Nature Medicine".
Not an Ideal Moment to Produce [19659008] The results are consistent with previous observations that people in cold regions have extra brown adipose tissue. However, researchers do not want to deduce tips for an ideal time to design their work. "Before we can give such advice, we need to better look at the context in humans," said Wolfrum, according to a press release from ETH Zurich. A jump in the wet cool but probably not enough for paternal cooling. A probably longer cold exposure is necessary for epigenetic impression.
Researchers began to compare the epigenetic characteristics of human sperm during the summer and winter months. For an assessment, it was still too early.
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