Brown fat prevents a variety of chronic diseases

brown fat is a magical tissue that burns energy, unlike white fat, which stores calories. But it has long been unclear whether people with large amounts of brown fat are really healthier. Now, a new study shows that people with detectable brown fat are less likely to develop heart and metabolic diseases, from type 2 diabetes to coronary artery disease, than their peers.
the largest human study of its kind to date, confirming and expanding the health benefits of brown fat as previously suggested. "For the first time, we have revealed that brown fat is associated with a low risk of certain diseases." "These findings give us more confidence in targeting brown fat for treatment," said Paul Cohen, an assistant professor and senior attending physician at Rockefeller University Hospital in the United States. al
though brown fat research has been done in newborns and animals for decades, it wasn't until 2009 that scientists realized that brown fat could also be found in some adults, especially around the neck and shoulders. Since then, researchers have been working on this elusive fat cell.
, however, large-scale studies of brown fat are virtually impossible because the tissue can only be shown in PET scans, a special medical imaging technique. "These scans are expensive, but more importantly, they use radiation." Tobias Becher, lead author of the study and a former clinical scholar at Cohen Labs, said.
but Becher found that thousands of people come to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center each year for PET scans to assess the cancer. When radiologists find brown fat in scans, they usually record it to make sure it's not mistaken for a tumor. "We realized it was a valuable resource that would allow us to start looking at brown fat on a population size." Becher said.
, the researchers analyzed 130,000 PET scans from more than 52,000 patients and found brown fat in nearly 10 percent of them. Moreover, several common and chronic diseases are less common in people who can detect brown fat. For example, only 4.6 percent had type 2 diabetes, compared with 9.5 percent of those who did not detect brown fat. Similarly, 18.9 percent of people had abnormal cholesterol, while those without brown fat had 22.2 percent.
addition, the study revealed a lower risk of high blood pressure, congesive heart failure and coronary artery disease in people with brown fat -- a link not observed in previous studies.
finding is that brown fat may reduce the negative health effects of obesity. In general, obese people have an increased risk of heart disease and metabolic disease, but the researchers found that among obese people with brown fat, the prevalence of these conditions was similar to that of non-obese people.
but the actual mechanism by which brown fat promotes health is unclear, but scientists have some clues. For example, brown fat cells burn glucose to burn calories, which may lower blood sugar, which is a major risk factor for developing diabetes.
the team plans to further study the biology of brown fat, including finding ways to explain why some people have more brown fat than others, helping people have more brown fat to treat obesity and related diseases.
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