Advances in BAT physiology for understanding and translating into Pharmacotherapies for obesity and comorbidities

Abstract

According to the WHO more than I billion adults are overweight and of these at least 200million men and 300million women are clinically obese.1 In a prospective study where over 9million people were evaluated in the last 3 decades ,it was found that the average body mass index (BMI) increased by 0.4‒0.5kg/m2/decade and subregion trends showed that the average BMI increased by 1.4kg/m2 in men and 1.9kg/m2 in women/decade.2 Obesity has been found to be a major risk factor for many diseases like cardiovascular diseases (CVD), type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), stroke, hypertension and many cancers.3 Special emphasis has been laid on finding strategies by which energy expenditure can be increased ,with the discovery of brown and beige adipocytes in humans. Earlier we had summarized the location, differentiation, surface markers of brown adipose tissue (BAT) /Beige adipocytes and mechanisms other than cold/β3 adrenergic agonists by which they can be targeted to improve obesity and thus metabolic syndrome (MS) and other comorbidities.4‒6 Here we further try to update how one can use enhancement of Brown adipose tissue( BAT) /Beige Brite adipocytes in the management of obesity and T2DM.