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Researchers from City of Hope have uncovered the biological reason why we become more sensitive to cold as we get older. Unlike white fat, which primarily stores energy, thermogenic fat is a special type of body fat that burns calories to produce heat and helps us stay warm. Thermogenic fat tends to become less active with age, which may explain why older people are more sensitive to cold.
"Learning how the body controls this process may offer insights into obesity, type 2 diabetes and other metabolic disorders," said Qiong "Annabel" Wang, an associate professor at City of Hope's Arthur Riggs Diabetes & Metabolism Research Institute and corresponding author of the new Nature study.
Her research reveals how signals from nerves and immune cells control how much heat thermogenic fat produces by changing the balance between highly active and less active fat cells.
Experiments in mice suggest that this system becomes less flexible with age, leaving thermogenic fat slower to respond when temperatures fall.
Previously, City of Hope researchers found that thermogenic fat cells vary in how much heat they produce. Some have high levels of UCP1 , a protein that generates heat, while others have less UCP1 and remain less active. In this study, City of Hope researchers observed a similar mix in human thermogenic fat samples, although they conducted most of their experiments in mice.
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