Researchers have identified a gene that could help reduce unhealthy fat in postmenopausal women.
Cornell University Professor Daniel Berry said a new study had identified potential therapies to reverse unhealthy shifts in body fat distribution caused by a decline in estrogen during menopause.
Professor Berry said researchers at the American university discovered that a receptor gene called Cxcr4, when blocked in mice, reduced the tendency of fat stem cells to develop into white fat.
He said this treatment could potentially be combined with low doses of estrogen therapy to cut changes in body fat distribution in menopausal women and protect against cardiometabolic disease.
“Under normal circumstances, estrogen therapy requires higher doses to be effective, which also raises a patient’s risk of breast cancer.”
Professor Berry said researchers had known for years that sex hormones, testosterone and estrogen, played roles in regulating fat development.
He said estrogen normally facilitated “healthy” subcutaneous fat, which was metabolically protective.
“When estrogen is removed, such as during menopause, women lose their ‘healthy’ fat and they have an increase of ‘unhealthy’ white fat, which is where extra calories are stored.
“That’s how women start to develop cardiometabolic diseases in their 50s.”
He said the findings offered promising avenues for further understanding how healthy and unhealthy fat tissue developed from stem cells, which could one day help address the obesity epidemic.
“It also offers a direction for reducing unhealthy white fat in postmenopausal women, by blocking Cxcr4 and then administering low-dose estrogen therapy that limits the detrimental side effects of breast cancer.
“Such a therapy could also prevent cardiovascular and metabolic diseases associated with excess white fat tissue.”
