Researchers used an AI model to phenotype brown fat across more than 101,000 patient scans, finding that people with more active brown adipose tissue had lower rates of heart disease, diabetes, anxiety and depression.
Brown fat burns energy to produce heat, unlike the white fat that stores it. Studying it in humans has always been difficult because it is small, scattered and hard to measure consistently. The research team trained an AI model to identify and quantify it from routine imaging at a scale no manual review could match.
The analysis also pointed to an unexpected lead: losartan, a common blood pressure medication, appeared to stimulate brown fat activity. That suggests an existing, well-understood drug might be repurposed to raise metabolic rate.
The association is not proof of cause. Whether activating brown fat actually improves cardiovascular or mental health outcomes still needs prospective trials, and the findings came from a single retrospective cohort.
The work was published in Nature.
