Brown adipose tissue (BAT) is a promising therapeutic target to improve weight maintenance and cardiometabolic health. However, BAT metabolic activity becomes dysfunctional in obesity. Hence, it is highly relevant to ascertain the mechanisms that modulate BAT function and how it can be improved in obesity. Rodent studies suggest that BAT function can be modulated by infiltrated immune cells during cold, although if this holds true is to be determined. Further, BAT may play an important role in immune responses to infection or inflammatory events, such as fever – especially considering its thermogenic role. This proposal aims to test these hypotheses by: i) characterizing the immune cell profile of BAT in lean and obese subjects; ii) exploring if a long-term cold acclimation improves the disrupted BAT metabolic activity in obese subjects, and if this is explained by changes in its immune-cell profile; iii) investigating if BAT thermogenic activity contributes to fever.

2022

2025