Why the study?
Knowledge about the physiological features of brown adipose tissue in neonates is limited due to a lack of ethically suitable investigation methods.
Does a mild cold stimulus activate brown adipose tissue thermogenesis and improve temperature adaptation in human newborns?
Does a mild cold stimulus activate brown adipose tissue thermogenesis and improve temperature adaptation in human newborns?
Non-invasive infrared thermography demonstrates that brown adipose tissue thermogenesis is functional in human newborns, can be activated by mild cold exposure, and is associated with BMP8B levels.
The classical dogma states that brown adipose tissue (BAT) plays a major role in the regulation of temperature in neonates. However, although BAT has been studied in infants for more than a century, the knowledge about its physiological features at this stage of life is rather limited. This has been mainly due to the lack of appropriate investigation methods, ethically suitable for neonates. Here, we have applied non-invasive infrared thermography (IRT) to investigate neonatal BAT activity. Our data show that BAT temperature correlates with body temperature and that mild cold stimulus promotes BAT activation in newborns. Notably, a single short-term cold stimulus during the first day of life improves the body temperature adaption to a subsequent cold event. Finally, we identify that bone morphogenic protein 8B (BMP8B) is associated with the BAT thermogenic response in neonates. Overall, our data uncover key features of the setup of BAT thermogenesis in newborns.
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Urisarri et al. (2021) studied this question.
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