How brown is brown fat? It depends where you look (original) (raw)

Nature Medicine volume 19, pages 540–541 (2013)Cite this article

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Although it is now accepted that adult humans possess active brown adipose tissue, it has been questioned whether this is genuine classical brown adipose tissue. Two new studies provide evidence that humans, both as babies and adults, do have classical brown tissue and also indicate that there is heterogeneity in the composition of brown fat depots in humans, as in mice (pages 631–634 and 635–639).

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Figure 1: The gradient of brown adipose in the human neck.

Katie Vicari

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jan Nedergaard and Barbara Cannon are at the Department of Molecular Biosciences, The Wenner-Gren Institute, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.,
    Jan Nedergaard & Barbara Cannon

Authors

  1. Jan Nedergaard
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  2. Barbara Cannon
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Correspondence toJan Nedergaard.

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Competing interests

J.N. is a member of the scientific advisory board and a shareholder in Ember Pharmaceuticals. B.C. is a member of the scientific and medical advisory board of Metabolic Solutions Development Corporation.

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Nedergaard, J., Cannon, B. How brown is brown fat? It depends where you look.Nat Med 19, 540–541 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.3187

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