Adipogenesis is inhibited by brief, daily exposure to high-frequency, extremely low-magnitude mechanical signals

Abstract

Obesity, a global pandemic that debilitates millions of people and burdens society with tens of billions of dollars in health care costs, is deterred by exercise. Although it is presumed that the more strenuous a physical challenge the more effective it will be in the suppression of adiposity, here it is shown that 15 weeks of brief, daily exposure to high-frequency mechanical signals, induced at a magnitude well below that which would arise during walking, inhibited adipogenesis by 27% in C57BL/6J mice. The mechanical signal also reduced key risk factors in the onset of type II diabetes, nonesterified free fatty acid and triglyceride content in the liver, by 43% and 39%, respectively. Over 9 weeks, these same signals suppressed fat production by 22% in the C3H.B6 -6T congenic mouse strain that exhibits accelerated age-related changes in body composition. In an effort to understand the means by which fat production was inhibited, irradiated mice receiving bone marrow transplants from heterozygous GFP ؉ mice revealed that 6 weeks of these low-magnitude mechanical signals reduced the commitment of mesenchymal stem cell differentiation into adipocytes by 19%, indicating that formation of adipose tissue in these models was deterred by a marked reduction in stem cell adipogenesis. Translated to the human, this may represent the basis for the nonpharmacologic prevention of obesity and its sequelae, achieved through developmental, rather than metabolic, pathways. mesenchymal stem cells ͉ obesity ͉ therapeutics ͉ diabetes ͉ vibration

Extremely Small-magnitude Accelerations Enhance Bone Regeneration: A Preliminary Study

“…Consistent with the high sensitivity of the regenerative processes in the cortical calvarial defect to the highfrequency signal, even cortical bone can respond to this mechanical signal if the skeleton is undergoing modeling [17,49]. Together with recent data suggesting mechanical stimuli may accelerate differentiation and/or proliferation of cells in general [19,25], and encourage differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells toward the osteogenic cell lineage [9,38], this may suggest the presence of specific stem cells and osteogenic cell populations are critical for efficacy of high-frequency mechanical signals. The benefit of the applied mechanical signal continued even during the 4-week rest period, perhaps suggesting the additional bone and vessels formed during the treatment period acted as a secondary resource for osteogenic and stem cells or the mechanism triggered by the signal remained active even after the stimulus had subsided [42].…”

Effect of Combination Therapy of Fatty Acids, Calcium, Vitamin D and Boron with Regular Physical Activity on Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Rat

“…factors associated with the onset of type II diabetes e.g., triglycerides and nonesterifi ed free fatty acid has been reported 3 . During exercise and recovery in young men, energy expenditure increased significantly with vibration and exercise training 4 .…”

Automated Separation of Visceral and Subcutaneous Adiposity in In Vivo Microcomputed Tomographies of Mice

“…The high resolution and good contrast of μCT allows the precise volumetric quantification of adipose tissue with high spatial discrimination 4,23 . The algorithm developed here standardizes and automates the analysis of the distribution of specific adipose compartments within the abdomen of small animals.…”

“…More recently, the application of μCT has been extended to image adipose tissue in mice in vivo 4,5 . Similar to micromagnetic resonance imaging, and in contrast to most current noninvasive imaging techniques such as dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry or nuclear magnetic resonance, μCT has the ability to provide spatial information on the three-dimensional distribution of adipose deposits throughout the animal.…”