Sex differences and aging: Is there a role of brown adipose tissue?
Sex differences and aging: Is there a role of brown adipose tissue?
复制标题
DOI：
10.1016/j.mce.2021.111310
复制
发表时间：
2021-07-01
影响因子：
4.1
通讯作者：
Valencak TG
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hoffman JM;Valencak TG
在世界各地的每个人口中，女性的寿命都比男性长得多；然而，导致年龄特定死亡率的性别差异的潜在生理过程在很大程度上是未知的。近年来，脂肪组织在衰老和长寿中的作用一直是人类和啮齿动物模型生物医学研究的重点。具体地说，棕色脂肪组织，一种最初被认为在人类婴儿期后不存在的体温调节组织，已被证明在整个生命周期中可能对健康起到作用。雌性拥有更大的成年棕色脂肪储存库，不仅更大，而且在非颤抖产热方面也更有效。这种棕色脂肪组织功能的改善可能会潜在地改善女性的健康，我们假设这种优势可能在老年人口中具有更大的意义。在这里，我们简要回顾了已知的关于衰老中的性别差异以及棕色脂肪组织中的性别差异如何可能有助于女性寿命优势。这些问题通常在啮齿类动物的大型实验研究中被作为人类衰老的转换模型来解决。总体而言，我们认为，在生物医学研究中，更好地理解产热-代谢关系是必要的，这些因素中的性别差异可能导致在人类群体中看到的女性长寿偏见。
In every population across the world, women live significantly longer than men; however, the underlying physiological processes that drive these sex differences in age-specific mortality are largely unknown. Recently, the role of adipose tissue in aging and longevity has been a focus of biomedical research in both humans and rodent models. Specifically, brown adipose tissue, a thermoregulatory tissue originally thought to not exist past infancy in humans, has been shown to potentially play a role in health throughout the lifespan. Females have larger adult brown adipose depots that are not just larger in size but also more efficient in nonshivering thermogenesis. This improved functioning of the brown adipose tissue may potentially lead to improved female health, and we hypothesize that this advantage may be of even bigger significance in the older population. Here, we briefly review what is known about sex differences in aging and how sex differences in brown adipose tissue may be contributing to the female lifespan advantage. These questions have usually been addressed in large experimental studies in rodents as a translational model of human aging. Overall, we propose that a better understanding of the thermogenesis-metabolism nexus is necessary in biomedical research, and sex differences in these factors may contribute to the female longevity bias seen in human populations.