Endocrine Abstracts

In most countries in the world, an increasing number of people suffer from the metabolic syndrome, normally defined as obesity, high blood sugar, high blood fats and high blood pressure. The new understanding that adult humans possess active brown adipose tissue has led to hope that a (re)activation of this tissue (browning) may be helpful in ameliorating the metabolic syndrome. Brown adipose tissue has the ability to combust (extra) food intake in a direct way, due to the uni...

Brown adipose tissue presently attracts broad interest due to the possibility that it may have the potential to counteract development of obesity and may have other positive metabolic effects, e.g. on glucose and lipid handling. As brown adipose tissue is found, to different extent, in nearly all humans up to middle age, the possibility to affect its activity may be of significance for human health. Brown adipose tissue is affected by several (neuro)endocrine factors. Best stu...

The advent of mice as the most common animal used for metabolic studies was caused by the possibility to perform gene manipulations in this species (which first very recently has become possible in the previously most studied animal: the rat). Although the mouse in many ways would seem just to be a smaller version of the rat, the smaller size indirectly has added a confounding factor to interpretation of metabolic studies. The reason is that the environmental temperatures unde...