Newborn babies have large amounts of brown adipose tissue (BAT). However, it decreases through childhood and by adulthood, it is present only in the neck.
- Boys with obesity have less active brown fat or brown adipose tissue(BAT)
- BAT helps the body burn regular fat and is activated by cold
- Better understanding of BAT can help develop new therapies to treat obesity
The patient sample included 13 boys with a normal BMI and the same number again with obesity, in the first study of its kind in children.
“The promise of this study is that if we can better understand BAT and how to mimic or stimulate its effects, it might offer us new therapies to treat obesity,” said Morrison, a professor in the university’s Department of Pediatrics and pediatrician at the McMaster Children’s Hospital.
“Beyond helping families improve their nutrition, physical activity, and sleep, we have few treatments to assist children and adolescents with obesity. There are new medications that reduce appetite used in some adolescents. Investigating BAT activity holds out the hope of developing a new class of drugs that increase the amount of energy you burn.”
However, Morrison said that it is still unknown whether a lack of BAT activity causes obesity, or if the condition simply impairs brown fat’s ability to burn energy.
Morrison said her team used MRI scans to measure BAT activity as it did not expose the boys to ionizing radiation, unlike CT or PET scans. This potential safety risk has impeded research in children until now.
Source-Eurekalert