Welcome to the Dulloo's Group at Institute of Physiology, Rue du Musée 5, CH-1700 Fribourg.
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Publications (type "Dulloo A") |
Throughout
much of their evolutionary history, the mammalian species (including humans)
have been faced with periodic food shortages, specific nutrient
deficiencies and sometimes food abundance. Within such a lifestyle of famine
and feast, specialized mechanisms that modulate the body's rate of
metabolism (and hence production of
heat) for the purpose of energy conservation, but also for energy wastage, have
evolved to the extent that they constitute key control systems in the regulation
of body weight and body composition. Such notions of homeostatic heat production
(adaptive thermogenesis) have
origins ever since Claude Bernard (1876) pointed out the role of the internal
environment in dampening the impact of external stresses on the body. However, a
mechanistic explanation of how these
control systems - operating through changes in heat production - enable the body
to make such adaptive adjustments in metabolic efficiency to these nutritional
stresses is still to-day a poorly understood area of mammalian physiology. Their
elucidations will have important implications for our understanding of body
weight regulation, for unravelling key pathways implicated in the pathogenesis
of obesity and related diseases
(in particular type 2 diabetes, hypertension
and cardiovascular diseases), and
hence for the development of more effective strategies in the management of
these diseases of civilisation.
