Key result
BALB/c mice exhibit ~0.46 °C higher interscapular brown adipose tissue temperature than C57BL/6 mice.
Why the study?
Murine models are commonly used to study brown adipose tissue, but commonly used mouse strains show significant phenotypic differences, warranting investigation into how age, strain, and gender affect interscapular brown adipose tissue temperature.
Infrared thermography can successfully measure interscapular BAT temperature in vivo, which varies significantly by mouse strain and gender.
Answers are grounded in this paper and cite their sources.
Should not yet change clinical practice; extends utility of infrared thermography for strain- and gender-specific BAT assessment in preclinical research.
Brown adipose tissue (BAT) has received renewed interest as a potential treatment target for obesity and comorbidities due to its thermogenic activity capacity and contribution to energy expenditure. Murine models are among the commonest preclinical models for studying human disease, including BAT studies. C57BL/6 and BALB/c are the two most commonly used mouse strains, however, differ-ent strains manifest significant behavioural differences, levels of sociability, emotionality, exercise response, respond differently to severe spinal cord injury, show differences in susceptibility to diet-induced obesity and insulin resistance, etc. To gain a broader understanding of the peculiarities, this study aimed to investigate the effect of age, strain and gender on interscapular BAT temperature changes and to analyse some blood biochemical and behavioural parameters in the aforementioned strains. The age of the mice (5–8 weeks) did not influence the interscapular BAT area temperature. The mean temperatures of the maximum (Tmax) and the average temperatures (Tisoth) in the BALB/c mice were by 0.46 °C (P<0.001) and by 0.37 °C (P<0.001) higher than in the C57BL/6 mice. In addi-tion, the gender of the mice also modulated the BAT area temperature, causing an increment of 0.29 °C (P<0.001) and 0.21 °C (P<0.05) in Tmax and Tisoth temperatures of males, respectively. The differ-ence in mean glucose, cholesterol and triglyceride levels between the BALB/c and C57BL/6 strains was not substantial. Behavioural analyses disclosed a statistically insignificant distribution of groom-ing activities in male BALB/c and C57BL/6 mice and significant (P<0.001) differences in female mice. Collectively, our findings revealed that infrared thermography can be successfully used to measure interscapular BAT temperature in mice in vivo, and that mouse strain and gender can alter BAT measurements.
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Žymantienė et al. (2026) studied this question. BALB/c strain vs. C57BL/6 strain was evaluated on Maximum interscapular brown adipose tissue temperature (Tmax) (MD 0.46 °C, p=<0.001). BALB/c mice had significantly higher maximum interscapular brown adipose tissue temperatures than C57BL/6 mice (mean difference 0.46 °C, P<0.001).
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