Researchers from the University of Padua and the Veneto Institute of Molecular Medicine discover a fundamental mechanism that opens up new avenues to combat obesity. The obesity epidemic in the Western world represents one of the challenges of modern medicine. In the United States almost 43% of the population is obese, in the WHO European region 20%, in Italy almost 10%. Obesity is a serious risk factor for cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancers, but there is a lack of drug therapies. One possibility is a “change” of the fat. In fact, there are two types of fat in our body, the so-called white fat, which is responsible for storing fat, and brown fat, which is instead used for the dissolution of fat, which in this tissue is converted into heat.
In short, brown fat “burns fat”. Unfortunately, the amount of brown fat is small and decreases with age. However, there is the hope of being able to “instruct” white fat to become similar to brown fat (in this case the fat is called beige, to emphasize the intermediate color between the two types of fat). The study published in Nature Metabolism, conducted by Dr. Camilla Bean of the Veneto Institute of Molecular Medicine (Vimm) and coordinated by prof. Luca Scorrano, full professor of Biochemistry of the Department of Biology of the University of Padua, Principal Investigator of the Vimm of which he was Scientific Director, opens a path in this direction.
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Source From: Ansa
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