New discoveries around a type of fat "good" that promotes calorie burning could one day lead to best treatments for obesity, researchers say.
Unlike the most recognizable white fat, which stores surplus energy, brown fat burns energy to generate heat.
. Newborn babies have brown fat - presumably to help regulate their body temperature - but it is believed that adults have little.
Researchers studied brown fat for several decades, hoping that unlocking the mysteries of single fat could result in treatments to accelerate metabolism and promote weight loss.
Two new studies to be published tomorrow in nature can bring them close to this goal."I really believe that promoting brown fat growth is a plausible approach to weight control", Bruce Spiegelman researcher, PhD, of the Cancer Dana-Farber Institute of Harvard University, WebMD Account. "For me, it is attractive because of its simplicity. If more than our fat was brown fat, mouse studies suggest that we would be thinner and able to resist obesity."
Best Fat Loss Smoothies - 'Brown' Fat: New Key to Weight Loss?
In previous research, Spiegelman and colleagues identified what he calls "Master" in rats, which promotes brown fat production.
In your last animal studies, the researchers showed that the molecular switch, known as PRDM16, regulates the creation of brown fat of immature cells and that overthrow the PRDM16 transform them into muscle cells."We show that brown fat and white fat have completely different origins," he says. "Brown fat is derived from the muscle. This was a huge surprise."
In the second study, the researchers at Harvard Diabetes Joslin described a different trigger for brown fat.
Yu-Hua Tseng, PhD and colleagues identified BMP-7 protein, which is known to promote bone growth as a growth factor for brown fat.
In mouse studies, researchers found that genetically altered mice not to have BMP-7 protein had less brown fat as they developed than unchanged rats.
and the mice developed treated with BMP-7 ended with more brown fat than untreated mice and had higher energy expenses.
Tseng tells WebMD that your laboratory is now studying the impact of long-term BMP-7 induction in body composition of mice.
"Hope is that this research will lead to the best ways to treat obesity, especially for people with overweight because of their genes," says Tseng. "Now, there are not many good options for these people."
In an editorial that accompanies the two studies, the obesity researcher Barbara Cannon, PhD, of the University of Stockholm, noted that although the two studies answer some questions about brown fat production, they raise others on the role of BMP-7 and PRDM16. In obesity and weight control.
"The answers to these questions would take us a step closer to the ultimate goal of promoting brown fat lineage as a potential way to contract obesity."
Spiegelman says the WebMD that he believes that obesity treatments that promote brown fat production can be a reality in a decade.
"We know we can stimulate brown fat production in rats," he says. "It is not irrational to think that we can also do this in humans."
