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...

HIV-1-infected patients under antirretroviral treatment develop the so-called ‘lipodystrophy syndrome’. It is characterized by peripheral lipoatrophy (face, limbs), visceral lipohypertrophy, and, sometimes abnormal accumulation of subcutaneous fat in specific sites, especially the dorso-cervical area. The abnormal fat distribution is associated with systemic alterations characteristic of the metabolic syndrome (dyslipidemia, insulin resistance). Drugs are importantly...

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) activity is a relevant component of energy expenditure in mammals. Moreover, BAT constitutes an active site of glucose and lipid draining and, therefore, BAT activity is also a relevant actor in the control of glycemia and lipidemia. Recent years, possibly because of the awareness that active BAT is present in adult humans, have witnessed a burst in the identification of novel endocrine factors released by peripheral tissues that can act on BAT beyon...

The potential therapeutic applications of targeting brown adipose tissue open new clinical avenues in fighting against metabolic pathologies. However, due to the limited brown depots in adult humans, dramatically reduced after birth, solid cell models to study human brown adipogenesis and its pathophysiological regulation are urgently needed.In our study, we characterized a novel human model of brown adipose stem cells, hfB-ASC, derived from fetal inters...