Vibrations Lower Body Fat in Mice Jackson Lab Subjects Also Built Stronger Bones

Oct 23, 01:42 PM

Current Headlines: By MEG HASKELL; OF THE NEWS STAFF

BAR HARBOR - Talk about good vibrations. Mice from The Jackson Laboratory have demonstrated that they can reduce body fat and build stronger bones simply by spending a few minutes a day exposed to a gentle jiggling.

Researchers from three U.S. biomedical laboratories - including Dr. Clifford Rosen, formerly of Bangor and now based in the Portland area - have demonstrated that mice exposed to very low-level vibrations in 15-minute episodes once a day develop significantly less fat than identical mice not exposed to the treatment, even when diet and other environmental factors are the same.

"It's incredibly important," Rosen said Monday. "It gets us closer to understanding the origin of how we develop fat cells."

Researchers at Stony Brook University and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York state and The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor studied groups of mice whose natural bone marrow had been destroyed and replaced with traceable marrow so researchers could follow its movement through the body. Bone marrow is one source of stem cells, "blank slate" structures that develop into all the specialized tissues of the living body, including fat.

The mice in the study were treated identically, except half were exposed to mild ultrasound vibrations for 15 minutes a day for 15 days. At the end of that time, all the mice were studied for abdominal fat composition and other factors.

The mice that underwent the treatment demonstrated 27 percent fewer fat cells and a higher percentage of lean muscle than the control mice. They also showed lower liver fats and other risk factors for diabetes, a common and deadly complication of obesity in humans.

The results were the same using at least two different mouse strains.

Rosen, internationally renowned for his research into bone disorders, including osteoporosis, said it has already been shown that mice exposed to the vibration treatment develop stronger bones. The new findings suggest strongly that stem cells respond to the vibration treatment by growing into bone tissue instead of fat tissue, although the precise reason is not clear.

Rosen said the vibrations used to stimulate the mice were barely perceptible to human touch, less palpable than the buzz of an electric razor.

The study report, "Adipogenesis is inhibited by brief, daily exposure to high-frequency, extremely low-magnitude mechanical signals," notes that the findings contrast with the widespread "more is better" message about undertaking strenuous physical exercise to prevent obesity and its complications. The report will be published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It may also be read online at the Jackson Lab Web site: www.jax.org.

Rosen said clinical studies already are under way to determine if vibrations help build stronger bones in humans. Now he said, it's likely those studies will be expanded to examine vibration's impact on human fat production.

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