So, is human brown fat important?
Given the observations of Ouellet et al. (2), we can now conclude that normal adult subjects possess brown adipose tissue that can be metabolically active. On our stepwise path to acceptance of brown adipose tissue as a significant metabolic factor, what is next?
One outstanding issue is whether human brown adipose tissue can be physiologically recruited, i.e., does prolonged exposure to an environmental factor such as cold increase the amount and thermogenic capacity of our brown adipose tissue? This would seem to be the case, at least as manifest by a winter/summer difference in the amount of brown adipose tissue in adult humans, when examined in dedicated studies (6) (retrospective studies tend to indicate the same [e.g., ref. 18], but the interpretation of retrospective studies is difficult). However, while a human ability to acclimate to cold by an increased capacity for nonshivering thermogenesis is clearly physiologically interesting, our potential to acclimate to cold is hardly a burning issue in our present civilization.
The interesting issue is, instead, whether the presence or absence (or relative amount) of brown adipose tissue influences our propensity to become obese (and thus our risk of developing obesity-related comorbidities). A very high negative correlation has been found between obesity and brown adipose tissue amount (6, 7). It could arguably be that obesity confers more insulation and therefore obese people possess less brown adipose tissue, although this would imply that the brown adipose tissue that we do possess is primarily a response to experienced cold, perhaps not a major challenge in Western society.
Probably what matters in this respect is our thermogenic response to a meal. Any meal is followed by a “thermogenesis” that has been discussed as consisting of two parts. One is the obligatory component related to the direct handling of the food. The other part (the existence of which has been doubted; ref. 19) is a facultative and possibly even adaptive extra thermogenic component (“diet-induced thermogenesis”) that leads to the apparently futile combustion of some of the energy ingested, thus reducing the amount of energy that is stored in the form of fat. This extra thermogenesis may be mediated by brown adipose tissue. Even in humans, there are indications in support of this. Having a genetic polymorphism that is associated with a lower expression of UCP1 leads to a lower thermogenic response to a meal (20). Furthermore, subjects who have been confirmed as possessing brown adipose tissue show a higher thermogenic response to a test meal than subjects without brown adipose tissue, i.e., they convert a higher proportion of the calories in the meal directly to heat than do subjects without brown fat (21).
Go to:
Go to: