Research Report: Hormone fights fat with fat

There are two types of body fat: white fat that stores energy and brown fat (packed with blood vessels and mitrochondria) that burns white fat. Long thought to disappear after infancy, brown fat has been rediscovered in adults humans using new imaging technology.

Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute researchers now report the discovery of orexin; a hormone that activates calorie-burning brown fat in mice. Orexin deficiency is associated with obesity, suggesting that supplemental orexin could lead to a new class of fat-fighting drugs focused on peripheral fat-burning tissue rather than the brain’s appetite control center which is the aim of most current weight-loss agents...