Uncoupling proteins: gender dependence

AlphaOmega2004 wrote:

Review
Uncoupling proteins: gender dependence and their relation to body
weight control

A M Rodríguez1 and A Palou1

1Departament de Biologia Fonamental i Ciències de la Salut, Ed.
Guillem Colom, Laboratori de Biologia Molecular, Nutrició i Biotecnologia,
Universitat de les Illes Balears, Palma de Mallorca, Spain

Correspondence to: Dr Ana M Rodríguez, Departament de Biologia
Fonamental i Ciències de la Salut, Ed. Guillem Colom, Universitat de les
Illes Balears, Cra. Valldemossa, Km 7.5, Palma de Mallorca, 07122, Spain.
E-mail:


Abstract

Members of the uncoupling protein (UCP) family have different
purported functions, which can be either directly or indirectly related to
the control of body weight. In this sense, most studies on this topic have
been carried out using male subjects, although different works with males
and females have shown important sex-associated differences in the
regulation of these proteins; for instance, sex differences have been shown
in the cold-, diet- and overweight-induced expression of brown adipose
tissue UCP1 and also in the correlation of muscle UCP3 with overweight. In
these kinds of studies, models of obesity such as cafeteria diet feeding and
postcafeteria have been very useful. Moreover, sex hormones have been shown
to modulate UCP1 expression in brown adipocytes in vitro. All these
sex-dependent differences, as well as sex differences in body weight gain
under a hypercaloric diet, could be related to the different respective
biological functions of males and females, taking into account the fact that
the gender effect in future studies on obesity could be of interest.

International Journal of Obesity (2004) 28, 500-502.
doi:10.1038/sj.ijo.0802588
Published online 3 February 2004

this is rat research. Just FYI.

Lyle