A percutaneous needle biopsy technique for sampling the supraclavicular brown adipose tissue depot of humans

• Published in: International Journal of Obesity 2015-10, Vol.39 (10), p.1561-1564
• Main Authors: Chondronikola, M, Annamalai, P, Chao, T, Porter, C, Saraf, M K, Cesani, F, Sidossis, L S
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 13/51; 631/443/319/2723; 692/699/2743/393; 692/700/139/1420; Adipose tissue; Adipose tissue (brown); Adipose Tissue, Brown - pathology; Adipose tissues; Adult; Biopsy; Biopsy, Fine-Needle - methods; Biopsy, Needle; Body fat; Clavicle; Cold Temperature; Computed tomography; Epidemiology; Health Promotion and Disease Prevention; Hematoma; Humans; Internal Medicine; Male; Medical imaging; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Metabolic Diseases; Metabolism; Obesity; Obesity - metabolism; Obesity - pathology; Positron emission; Positron emission tomography; Preventive medicine; Public Health; Sampling; short-communication; Suctioning; Thermogenesis; Tomography; Tomography, X-Ray Computed
• ISSN: 0307-0565; 1476-5497
• DOI: 10.1038/ijo.2015.76

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) has been proposed as a potential target tissue against obesity and its related metabolic complications. Although the molecular and functional characteristics of BAT have been intensively studied in rodents, only a few studies have used human BAT specimens due to the difficulty of sampling human BAT deposits. We established a novel positron emission tomography and computed tomography-guided Bergström needle biopsy technique to acquire human BAT specimens from the supraclavicular area in human subjects. Forty-three biopsies were performed on 23 participants. The procedure was tolerated well by the majority of participants. No major complications were noted. Numbness (9.6%) and hematoma (2.3%) were the two minor complications noted, which fully resolved. Thus, the proposed biopsy technique can be considered safe with only minimal risk of adverse events. Adoption of the proposed method is expected to increase the sampling of the supraclavicular BAT depot for research purposes so as to augment the scientific knowledge of the biology of human BAT.