Using brown adipose tissue to treat obesity – the central issue

Current therapeutic strategies are proving inadequate to deal with growing obesity rates because of the inherent resistance of the human body to weight loss. The activation of human brown adipose tissue (BAT) represents an opportunity to increase energy expenditure and weight loss alongside improved lipid and glucose homeostasis. Research into the regulation of BAT has made increasing the thermogenic capacity of an individual to treat metabolic disease a plausible strategy, despite thermogenesis being under tight central nervous system control. Previous therapies targeted at the sympathetic nervous system have had deleterious effects because of a lack of organ specificity, but advances in our understanding of central BAT regulatory systems might open up better strategies to specifically stimulate BAT in obese individuals to aid weight reduction.