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Brown fat generates energy as heat, whereas white fat stores energy. Studies in mice and other animals have demonstrated that brown fat protects against glucose intolerance and vascular disease. However, although brown fat was first detected in humans about 10 years ago, whether it has health benefits is unclear.
An international team examined 135,000 positron-emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) scans from 52,000 cancer patients. They identified people with brown fat and a comparison group without brown fat, using propensity-score matching. Patients with brown fat had lower blood glucose and triglyceride levels and higher HDL cholesterol levels. More importantly, they also had significantly lower rates of type 2 diabetes, dyslip…