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ScienceDaily reports that:
Many patients with advanced stages of cancer, AIDS, tuberculosis, and other diseases die from a condition called cachexia, which is characterized as a "wasting" syndrome that causes extreme thinness with muscle weakness. Cachexia is the direct cause of roughly 20% of deaths in cancer patients. While boosting food intake doesn't help, and no effective therapies are available, new research in the Cell Press journal Cell Metabolism points to a promising strategy that may stimulate weight gain and muscle strength.
The research relates to a process that has been gaining considerable attention as a way to combat obesity: the browning of white fat. While white fat normally stores calories, brown fat burns them and generates heat in the process. Therefore, efforts to turn white fat into brown fat may help people lose weight.
Erwin Wagner, of the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre in Madrid, and his colleagues found that in mice and patients with cancer-associated cachexia, white fat undergoes significant changes and turns into calorie-burning brown fat. The transformation leads to increased energy consumption and organ wasting.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Tuesday July 22 2014, @10:56PM
In other words, the browning process slightly reduces the calorie content of the fat. How does that turn calorie storing fat into calorie burning fat? I don't think it actually does. Merely the use of terms like "stores calories" versus "burns calories" for nearly identical materials indicates to me that pseudoscience is going on.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kaszz on Tuesday July 22 2014, @11:05PM
I think you got it wrong. In essence when white fat cells that stores energy as fat turns into brown fat that will burn energy instead of storing it. That will cause any stored energy to be transformed into heat. That energy will be taken from the fat.
The big question is what molecule(s) is needed to tell the cells to do this transition. Perhaps it's even worth a Nobel price in Medicine.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @01:33PM
Brown fat cells have mitochondria, and those mitochondria express Uncoupling Protein 1 (UCP1), which is basically a proton channel. You may remember that mitochondria work by burning glucose/fat/acetyl-coenzyme A to create a proton gradient and then use the flow of those protons to generate ATP. UCP1 discharges the proton gradient without generating any ATP, thus uncoupling the burning of glucose/fat from the synthesis of ATP. Those cells then burn glucose/fat all the time at relatively high rate. This is great for the (mostly baby, Arctic-dwelling) mammals: they basically carry a fire around with them.
Other cells also express UCP1 under some circumstances. Skeletal muscle, for example, possibly as a mechanism to thermo-regulate, possibly to balance between carbohydrate and fat as a fuel source.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday July 22 2014, @11:07PM
Huh, I thought from the quote that this was a nutrition-based thing with white fat and brown fat being things you eat. I guess they're actually speaking of the visual appearance of fatty tissue in mammalian bodies. Well, glancing through the Wikipedia article on "brown fat" [wikipedia.org],
That sounds a bit like white and brown fat might not actually transform into each other.
I apologize for the reading fail.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday July 22 2014, @11:16PM
There might be an additional molecular pathway between white- and brown fat cells.
(Score: 4, Informative) by sjames on Wednesday July 23 2014, @12:36AM
To become brown fat, the number of mitochondria in the cell increases considerably. That allows the cells to convert calories into heat.Where would the pseudoscience be? Every cell in your body contains the blueprints for every other cell type.
(Score: 1) by clone141166 on Wednesday July 23 2014, @01:52AM
Nitpicky detail, but not every other cell type; eg. red blood cells have no nucleus and thus no DNA (which consequently makes them virus-proof!).
(Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Wednesday July 23 2014, @02:12AM
To nitpick further, the red blood cells start out with a nucleus but jettison it in the final step to maturity.
(Score: 2) by clone141166 on Wednesday July 23 2014, @02:33AM
Touche` sir. :)