Research
Hormonal
Chronic glucocorticoid treatment suppresses brown adipose tissue (BAT) activation in humans, reducing both the volume and glucose uptake of active BAT.
If you are on long-term steroid medication, your body's ability to burn fat via brown fat may be suppressed, potentially contributing to weight gain. This is a known side effect of chronic steroid use, distinct from the acute effects seen in healthy individuals.
GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Significantly fewer glucocorticoid-treated patients had detectable BAT compared to controls... The controls had greater BAT volume and total 18FDG uptake by BAT than glucocorticoid-treated patients... this shows that chronic glucocorticoid treatment suppresses BAT activation in humans.
Why this rating
Retrospective analysis of a large cohort (n=249) with matched controls, supported by in vitro chronic culture data.
Source
Glucocorticoids Acutely Increase Brown Adipose Tissue Activity in Humans, Revealing Species-Specific Differences in UCP-1 Regulation
Lynne Ramage et al. · Cell Metabolism · 2016
DOI 10.1016/j.cmet.2016.06.011
crossover · n=15Cited 182×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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