Endocrine Abstracts

Brown adipose tissue (BAT), in addition to its role in adaptive thermogenesis, secretes regulatory factors (brown adipokines or ‘batokines’) that have autocrine, paracrine, and endocrine actions. Local secretion of brown adipokines by brown adipocytes target distinct cell types in the tissue (e.g. vascular cells, sympathetic nerve endings, immune cells) and promote the remodeling of BAT in response to distinct physiological conditions requiring adaptive thermogenesis...

Promotion of brown adipose tissue (BAT) activity or browning of white adipose tissue has shown great potential as anti-obesity strategy in numerous preclinical models. The discovery of active BAT in humans and the recent advances in the understanding of human BAT biology and function have sparked this field of research. Pharmacological stimulation of energy expenditure to counteract obesity has always been an intriguing therapeutic concept; the identification of the specific m...

In 2009 three independent research groups confirmed the existence of metabolically active brown adipose tissue in human adults. There is increasing evidence that enhanced BAT function can improve systemic health in humans by utilizing glucose and lipids from the circulation and by increasing metabolic rate. Therefore BAT activation could provide a strategy to combat the increasing epidemic of obesity and type 2 diabetes. The function of BAT is controlled by various endogenous ...