Chronic l-menthol-induced browning of white adipose tissue hypothesis: A putative therapeutic regime for combating obesity and improving metabolic health
Ημερομηνία
2016Γλώσσα
en
Λέξη-κλειδί
Επιτομή
Introduction: Obesity constitutes a serious global health concern reaching pandemic prevalence rates. The existence of functional brown adipose tissue (BAT) in adult humans has provoked intense research interest in the role of this metabolically active tissue in whole-body energy balance and body weight regulation. A number of environmental, physiological, pathological, and pharmacological stimuli have been proposed to induce BAT-mediated thermogenesis and functional thermogenic BAT-like activity in white adipose tissue (WAT), opening new avenues for therapeutic strategies based on enhancing the number of beige adipocytes in WAT. Hypothesis: Recent evidence support a role of l-menthol cooling, mediated by TRPM8 receptor, on UCP1-dependent thermogenesis and BAT-like activity in classical WAT depots along with the recruitment of BAT at specific anatomical sites. l-Menthol-induced BAT thermogenesis has been suggested to occur by a β-adrenergic-independent mechanism, avoiding potential side-effects due to extensive β-adrenergic stimulation mediated by available beta receptor agonists. l-Menthol has been also linked to the activation of the cold-gated ion channel TRPA1. However, its role in l-menthol-induced UCP1-dependent thermogenic activity in BAT and WAT remains undetermined. White adipose tissue plasticity has important clinical implications for obesity prevention and/or treatment because higher levels of UCP1-dependent thermogenesis can lead to enhanced energy expenditure at a considerable extent. We hypothesize that chronic dietary l-menthol treatment could induce TRPM8- and TRPA1-dependent WAT adaptations, resembling BAT-like activity, and overall improve whole-body metabolic health in obese and overweight individuals. Conclusions: The putative impact of chronic l-menthol dietary treatment on the stimulation of BAT-like activity in classical WAT depots in humans remains unknown. A detailed experimental design has been proposed to investigate the hypothesized l-menthol-induced browning of WAT. If our hypothesis was to be confirmed, TRPM8/TRPA1-induced metabolic adaptations of WAT to BAT-like activity could provide a promising novel therapeutic approach for increasing energy expenditure, regulating body weight, and preventing obesity and its related co-morbidities in humans. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd.
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Role of VEGFs in metabolic disorders
di Somma M., Vliora M., Grillo E., Castro B., Dakou E., Schaafsma W., Vanparijs J., Corsini M., Ravelli C., Sakellariou E., Mitola S. (2020)Obesity and metabolic disorders are important public health problems. In this review, the role of vasculature network and VEGF in the adipose tissue maintenance and supplementation is discussed. Angiogenesis is a key process ... -
Natural histogel-based bio-scaffolds for sustaining angiogenesis in beige adipose tissue
Di Somma M., Schaafsma W., Grillo E., Vliora M., Dakou E., Corsini M., Ravelli C., Ronca R., Sakellariou P., Vanparijs J., Castro B., Mitola S. (2019)In the treatment of obesity and its related disorders, one of the measures adopted is weight reduction by controlling nutrition and increasing physical activity. A valid alternative to restore the physiological function ... -
Exercise-induced effects on UCP1 expression in classical brown adipose tissue: A systematic review
Flouris A.D., Dinas P.C., Valente A., Andrade C.M.B., Kawashita N.H., Sakellariou P. (2017)Understanding the impact of regular exercise training on uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1) activity in classical brown adipose tissue (CBAT) is vital to our knowledge of whole-body thermogenic activity. The purpose of this ...