You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Editorial
Regulation of energy balance by brown adipose tissue: at least three potential roles for physical activity
  1. Jonatan R Ruiz1,
  2. Borja Martinez-Tellez1,
  3. Guillermo Sanchez-Delgado1,
  4. Concepcion M Aguilera2,
  5. Angel Gil2
  1. 1 PROFITH “PROmoting FITness and Health through physical activity” Research Group, Faculty of Sport Sciences, Department of Physical Education and Sport, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
  2. 2 Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology II, Institute of Nutrition and Food Technology, Centre for Biomedical Research, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
  1. Correspondence to Dr Jonatan R Ruiz, PROFITH “PROmoting FITness and Health through physical activity” Research Group, Faculty of Sport Sciences, Department of Physical Education and Sport, University of Granada, Carretera de Alfacar s/n, Granada 18071, Spain; ruizj{at}ugr.es

https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2014-094537

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Brown adipose tissue (BAT) has the ability to oxidise glucose and lipids, and dissipate energy in the form of heat.1 Thus, it could provide one method to influence energy balance—and therefore, be a player in the fight against obesity and type 2 diabetes.

    BAT is highly regulated by the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) to increase body temperature when mammals are exposed to cold. The heat production is mediated by uncoupling protein 1 (UCP-1), an inner-membrane mitochondrial protein exclusively expressed in BAT.1 Dogma was that BAT was only present in newborns. However, radiologists using the radiotracer 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose in positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography to detect metabolically active tumours, found competing areas in the supraclavicular, thoracic spine and neck regions with high rates of glucose uptake. The significance of BAT for human physiology was recognised in 2007.2

    Recently, another type of cells called brown-in-white (BRITE) or beige cells, in white adipose tissue (WAT) have been found.3 BRITE cells possess a multilocular morphology, enriched mitochondria and express the brown adipocyte-specific UCP-1.

    Importance of activating BAT

    A potential clinical implication of activating BAT relates to the stimulation of resting energy expenditure and diet-induced thermogenesis. In humans, the thermogenic response to a meal is higher in those possessing BAT. It has been estimated that 50 g of activated BAT might translate to increase ∼5% of resting …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors JRR wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors contributed to the interpretation and discussion of the content, and critically revised the drafted manuscript.

    • Funding The study was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, Fondo de Investigación Sanitaria del Instituto de Salud Carlos III (PI13/01393) Fondos Estructurales de la Unión Europea (FEDER), Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (RYC-2010–05957) by the Spanish Ministry of Education (FPU 13/04365). This study is part of a Ph.D. thesis conducted in the Biomedicine Doctoral Studies of the University of Granada, Spain.

    • Competing interests None.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.