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    Home > Biochemistry News > Biotechnology News > This fat is "essential" to protect the brain from dementia!

    This fat is "essential" to protect the brain from dementia!

    • Last Update: 2021-08-28
    • Source: Internet
    • Author: User
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    Dr.
    Alexis M.
    Stranahan and her colleagues reported in the journal Nature Communications that they found that beige fat cells play a protective role in the brain from subcutaneous fat
    .


    In the subcutaneous fat of a person with a pear-shaped body, beige fat cells are usually mixed with white fat cells


    Pear-shaped people, their weight is generally more evenly distributed, rather than "apple-shaped" patients.
    Fat accumulates among them, often in the abdominal internal organs such as the liver, which is considered to reduce the risk of metabolic diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes.
    , And cognitive decline, said Stranahan, a neuroscientist at the University of Georgia School of Medicine at Augusta
    .

    Now, scientists have shown that beige fat cells or adipocytes are "essential" for the neuroprotective and anti-inflammatory effects of subcutaneous fat, said Stranahan, the corresponding author of the study
    .

    In fact, there are no beige fat cells.
    Faced with a high-fat diet, they saw that subcutaneous fat began to act more like dangerous visceral fat.
    Stranahan said that in the Journal of Clinical Research last year, it was reported that too much visceral fat sent a message to residents.
    Immune cells Initiation of inflammation in the brain will eventually impair cognitive ability
    .


    "This is a very different signature," she said


    Visceral fat around organs is mainly white fat cells, which store energy in the form of triglycerides.
    Triglycerides are another type of fat found in the blood.
    At high levels, it is a risk factor for heart disease and stroke
    .


    Especially in young people, subcutaneous fat is a mixture of white and beige fat cells, and these beige cells are more like brown fat cells.


    In some of their studies, the scientists used male mice with a specific gene knocked out.
    This gene prevents yellowing or browning of subcutaneous fat cells, effectively making subcutaneous fat more like visceral fat
    .

    In the case of a high-fat diet, these mice are more likely to develop diabetes than those with normal brown fat
    .


    It is well known that transplanting subcutaneous fat into obese mice will improve their metabolism within a few weeks, and she wants to know the potential impact on cognitive problems


    In four weeks, normal mice and gene knockout mice gained about the same amount of weight, but in the test, mice without functional beige fat showed accelerated cognitive dysfunction, and their brains and bodies interacted with each other.
    A high-fat diet produces a strong and rapid inflammatory response, including activation of microglia.
    These immune cells residing in the brain can further aggravate inflammation, leading to dementia and other brain problems
    .

    Before they developed diabetes, the microglia of these 20-something mice had already shown many markers of inflammation
    .


    Interestingly, the normal mice they studied as a control group also turned on these markers, but also turned on anti-inflammatory markers, apparently to reduce any response


    Under normal circumstances, it takes about three months for mice eating high-fat foods to show the beige fat elimination response they saw in a month
    .

    In order to further explore the impact of gray-brown fat, they also transplanted the subcutaneous fat of young, thin, healthy mice into the visceral cavity of other normal but now obese mice, which appeared after 10 to 12 weeks of continuous high-fat diet Dementia-like behavior
    .

    The transplantation of subcutaneous fat improves memory and restores the basically normal synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus (the center of learning and memory deep in the brain)—the ability to adapt to the connections between neurons so that they can communicate
    .


    Stranahan and her colleagues wrote that these positive changes depend on beige fat cells in the donor's subcutaneous fat


    On the other hand, through strict objective measurements, such as increased electrical activity between neurons, mice transplanted from beige fat knockout did not improve the cognitive ability of obese mice
    .

    "If we can find out that it is beige fat to limit inflammation, maybe it is beige fat and improve brain plasticity, then maybe we can imitate it, with drugs or cold-stimulated beige, or even take some of your young subcutaneous fat and freeze it, I'll return it to you when you are old," Stranahan said
    .

    All fats are rich in immune cells, which can promote and calm inflammation
    .


    They found that beige fat continued to interact with these immune cells to induce the anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-4 in subcutaneous fat


    In turn, fat also induces IL-4 in microglia and T cells, which is a key driver of the immune response.
    It also induces IL-4 in the meninges, which is a multilayer covering the brain.
    The cap helps protect the brain
    .


    They also found that T cells in the choroidal plexus that produce cerebrospinal fluid have IL-4 induced sedation


    The scientists write that their findings indicate that IL-4 is directly involved in communication between beige fat cells and hippocampal neurons
    .

    "If you've heard this song in the camp, it's a bit like "Whisper Down the Lane" (Whisper Down the Lane)," Stranahan said, which seemed to be a calm communication chain
    .

    When Stranahan and her team studied further, they found that the transplanted beige fat cells, rather than the immune cells derived from the transplanted fat itself, called the recipient’s own T cells in the meninges, which played a positive role.
    The protective effect
    .

    There is evidence that in chronic obesity, your own immune cells can reach the brain, and in this example, there is no evidence that the donor's immune cells are on the journey
    .

    Stranahan said: "This is very exciting, because we have a way for peripheral immune cells to interact with the brain to promote cognitive ability
    .
    " He pointed out that immune cells can also do a lot of bad things in the brain.
    Things, such as causing stroke and Alzheimer's disease
    .

    Her next goal includes learning more about how important it is to put the transplanted fat, such as whether transferring subcutaneous fat to the subcutaneous area can better prevent cognitive decline; whether transplanting visceral fat under the skin can reduce its damage Role; better understand how subcutaneous fat conveys a seemingly positive anti-inflammatory message
    .
    She also wants to explore these issues in female mice, because the current research is limited to male mice
    .

    But she said that they and others have discovered the importance of internal fat distribution, which may be a biomarker for those who are at greatest risk of cognitive decline
    .

    The obesity stage may be another factor, because she also has early evidence that the longer the high-fat diet is maintained, the more subcutaneous fat increases, and its protective ability decreases, and visceral fat increases
    .

    Stranahan pointed out that even healthy, non-obese young people, visceral fat can produce higher levels of underlying inflammation
    .

    Stranahan emphasized that she does not want her research results to cause excessive attention to or prejudice against overweight individuals, but to better identify risk factors and different intervention points and methods to adapt to individual needs
    .

    Stranahan and her colleagues reported in the 2015 issue of Brain, Behavior, and Immunity that a high-fat diet causes microglia to become abnormally sedentary and begin to devour connections between neurons
    .

    In adults, brown fat is mainly located between the shoulder blades and the upper chest
    .
    There is evidence that we can increase brown and beige fat cells by exposing ourselves to colder temperatures for several hours a day and through high-intensity exercise
    .
    These methods will also promote the whitening of white fat
    .
    She said that most of us may have some combination of fat cell types: mainly white, less beige, or even less brown
    .

    This research was funded by the National Institutes of Health
    .

    Journal Reference :

    1. De-Huang Guo, Masaki Yamamoto, Caterina M.
      Hernandez, Hesam Khodadadi, Babak Baban, Alexis M.
      Stranahan.
      Beige adipocytes mediate the neuroprotective and anti-inflammatory effects of subcutaneous fat in obese mice .
      Nature Communications , 2021; 12 (1) DOI: 10.
      1038/s41467-021-24540-8

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