Thermal imaging to assess BAT function in overweight men (BATmen)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A cross-sectional study to assess the reliability of infrared thermography (IRT) in measuring brown adipose tissue (BAT) activation compared to PET-CT in overweight healthy male volunteers exposed to cold-stimulus
IRAS ID
217726
Contact name
Guruprasad Aithal
Contact email
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
The prevalence of obesity and its consequences are rising in the UK. Lifestyle strategies and drug treatments to tackle obesity have been generally unsuccessful. As such, there has been a lot of research into alternative treatment targets such as brown adipose tissue (BAT).
BAT is a heat-producing tissue which was previously thought only to be active in babies and children, where it plays an important role in maintaining a constant body temperature. The amount of BAT decreases with age and was only noticed in adults when picked up incidentally on PET-CT – a scan used in cancer diagnosis to identify metabolically active tissues. BAT has been shown to still produce heat in adults when stimulated by cold conditions, and in doing so, increases energy expenditure. For this reason the activation of BAT has become a possible treatment option for obesity.
Until now, PET-CT (which requires exposure to radiation) was the only way to study BAT. More recently infrared thermography (IRT) – a non-invasive way to measure skin temperature – has been shown to identify BAT activity in the same way that a PET-CT can. This is done by using a thermal camera to take serial pictures of the neck (where the largest depots of BAT are found) whilst an arm is cooled using a cooling pad. This technique however has not been trialled in overweight individuals - our target group. For this reason we propose a study to assess the use of IRT in overweight individuals and to allow further larger studies to be done.
10 male participants with a body mass index ≥25kg/m2 but <40kg/m2 (overweight but not morbidly obese) will be included in the study. They will attend for one study visit where they will undergo IRT imaging under thermoneutral conditions and with cooling, and have a PET-CT to corroborate the findings.
REC name
East Midlands - Nottingham 1 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/EM/0106
Date of REC Opinion
31 Mar 2017
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion