Gender Differences in the Response to Short-term Cold Exposure in Young Adults

Abstract

Context Cold exposure (CE) has been shown to enhance energy expenditure by activating brown adipose tissue thermogenesis and metabolism in humans. However, it remains to be elucidated if there are gender-specific differences in cold-induced thermogenesis and metabolism. Objective To study the impact of mild CE on resting energy expenditure (REE) and metabolism in males compared with females. Setting A cross-sectional study. Participants 117 healthy young Caucasians participated in this study (58 males). Mean age was 25.1 ± 3.6 years and mean body mass index 22.3 ± 1.7 kg/m2. Intervention Participants underwent a short-term CE using water perfused mattresses to activate nonshivering thermogenesis. Main Outcome Measures REE was assessed before and 2 hours after CE followed by blood sampling. Selected metabolites and hormones were measured. Skin temperatures were monitored at various sites throughout the experiment. Results Participants showed a significant increase in REE after CE (6.5%, P < .001). This increase did not differ between genders (P = .908). However, there were differences between males and females in changes of plasma glucose (–5.1% versus –7.4%, P = .024), leptin (–14.3% versus –30.1%, P < .001) and adiponectin (5.4% versus 12.8%, P = .018) after CE. We observed a significant decrease of the supraclavicular skin temperature in men (–0.3%, P = .034), but not in women (0.3%, P = .326)(P = .019 between genders). Conclusions We did not observe a difference in the thermogenic response, measured as change of REE, to CE in women compared with men. However, we found that some metabolic and hormonal changes were more pronounced in women than in men suggesting a gender-specific response to cold.

Intraindividual difference between supraclavicular and subcutaneous proton density fat fraction is associated with cold-induced thermogenesis

“…For this bicentric prospective cross-sectional study conducted at the Technical University Munich, adult volunteers were recruited from a cross-sectional study implemented by the Institute for Nutritional Medicine, School of Medicine, Technical University of Munich (42), which investigated the impact of cold exposure on REE. All procedures performed in this study were conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki (as revised in 2013).…”

MECHANISMS IN ENDOCRINOLOGY: Human brown adipose tissue as a therapeutic target: warming up or cooling down?

“…Clinical PET/CT studies identified that increased outdoor temperature and male sex were associated with reduced 18 F-FDG uptake by BAT ( 40 , 42 ). However, dedicated cold exposure studies have not revealed substantial differences in BAT activity between sexes ( 43 ), potentially indicating that females activate their BAT at higher room temperature than males. Ethnicity may also alter BAT mass/activity, which has been implicated in the greater risk of metabolic disease in individuals of South Asian origin ( 44 ).…”

Circulating miR-375 Correlates With Response of Human Individuals to Short-Term Cold Exposure

“…Immediately the second blood drawing took place. For detailed description of the cooling protocol, see relevant publication 19 .…”

“…Recently our group reported that adult humans show high variability in their increase in resting energy expenditure (REE) after a standardized mild cold-exposure 19 (Mengel, et al, submitted). The study also revealed an increase in the expression of the browning marker gene CIDEA in female but not in male participants.…”