Cold Induced Changes in White Adipose

Summary

An adaptation to a cold environment is a tendency to generate heat within our body. Some of this heat comes from our fat tissue. Although most fat tissue is "white fat", there are pockets deep within the body that are called "brown fat", which are specially adapted to burning fat and making heat. The investigator believes that our white fat, just underneath the surface of our skin, also has this property to burn fat and make heat, although not at the high level of brown fat. This study is to examine this fat-burning property of the white fat under the skin in response to seasons and to cold. Many such studies have been done in mice, but little has been done in humans. There are a number of factors, including age, weight, and medical history, that may make a person eligible or ineligible to participate in this study. Certain medications could make a person ineligible, but if these medications can be safely altered, the individual may become eligible.

Timeline

Start

2016-03

Primary completion

2018-08-20

Completion

2018-08-20

Publications

• Results Finlin BS, Memetimin H, Confides AL, Kasza I, Zhu B, Vekaria HJ, Harfmann B, Jones KA, Johnson ZR, Westgate PM, Alexander CM, Sullivan PG, Dupont-Versteegden EE, Kern PA. Human adipose beiging in response to cold and mirabegron. JCI Insight. 2018 Aug 9;3(15):e121510. doi: 10.1172/jci.insight.121510. eCollection 2018 Aug 9.
• Thiagarajan D, Quadri N, Jawahar S, Zirpoli H, Del Pozo CH, Lopez-Diez R, Hasan SN, Yepuri G, Gugger PF, Finlin BS, Kern PA, Gabbay K, Schmidt AM, Ramasamy R. Aldose reductase promotes diet-induced obesity via induction of senescence in subcutaneous adipose tissue. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2022 Aug;30(8):1647-1658. doi: 10.1002/oby.23496.

Drugs

Indications