Non-shivering thermogenesis and its current advances in clinical trials targeting obesity

Abstract

Obesity is a major risk factor for adverse cardiometabolic events such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Cardiometabolic diseases are the number one cause of death globally. Despite being the leading cause of death, many therapeutics targeted at its risk factors such as obesity have limited effectiveness. This limited effectiveness warrants research into novel strategies to combat obesity. Past literature established an inverse relationship between obesity and thermogenic activity. Research in thermogenesis has made unprecedented progress in the past decade. Based on this progress, thermogenesis has been proposed as a novel target for treating obesity. Thermogenesis is targeted due to its ability to expend excess energy such as fat in the form of heat. This conversion from fat to heat is mostly done by brown and brite adipocytes in brown adipose tissue (BAT). This review presents current advances in clinical trials related to the therapeutic application of non-shivering thermogenesis. Each clinical trial topic is highlighted and summarized. This paper summarized sympathetic nervous system activation (cold-induced, pharmacologically activated, and thyroid hormones), and transient receptor potential (TRP) channels on non-shivering thermogenesis. Advanced knowledge in non-shivering thermogenesis allows researchers to harness its vast therapeutic potential to combat obesity.