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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2010 Apr 26.
Published in final edited form as: N Engl J Med. 2009 Apr 9;360(15):1509–1517. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa0810780

Figure 1. Immunohistochemical Analysis and the Prevalence, Mass, and Activity of Brown Adipose Tissue.

Figure 1

Histologic analysis of biopsy specimens from a 48-year-old woman who underwent a parathyroidectomy (Panels A and B) shows the presence of brown adipocytes as stained by either hematoxylin and eosin (Panel A) or antibody to uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1) and counterstained with hematoxylin (Panel B). Panel C shows the quantification of the amount and activity of brown adipose tissue in regions of interest (red outline in images obtained with positron-emission tomography [PET] [left], computed tomography [CT] [center], and combined PET–CT [right]) that included the principal cervical, supraclavicular, and superior mediastinal depots of brown adipose tissue. Panel D shows the prevalence of detectable brown adipose tissue in men and women. Panel E shows the mass of brown adipose tissue in grams and Panel F the activity of brown adipose tissue in grams times the mean standardized uptake value (SUV) in grams per milliliter. In Panels E and F, the box plots indicate the lower quartile (lower line), median quartile (middle line), upper quartile (upper line), 1.5 times the interquartile range (lower and upper whiskers), and outliers (circles).