Turning Bad Fat Into Good: A New Candidate Pathway for Treating Visceral Obesity
Date: 16.5.2012
Brown fat expends energy, while its counterpart, white fat stores it. The danger in white fat cells, along with the increased risk for diabetes and heart disease it poses, seems especially linked to visceral fat. Visceral fat is the build-up of fat around the organs in the belly.
So in the battle against obesity, brown fat appears to be our friend and white fat our foe.
By manipulating the metabolic pathways in the body responsible for converting vitamin A-or retinol-into retinoic acid, Plutzky and his colleagues have essentially made white fat take on characteristics of brown fat. Their findings put medical science a step closer in the race to develop novel anti-obesity therapies.
