Fig. 4.

The role of asprosin in metabolic organs. Left solid box: During fasting or in obesity, increased circulating asprosin promotes hepatic glucose production and increases insulin secretion from the pancreas (Romere et al. 2016). Asprosin also activates the AgRP neurons in the brain and increases appetite (Duerrschmid et al. 2017). Both asprosin functions have been tested and validated in vivo and in vitro experiments. Right dashed box: Other in vitro studies have shown that increased asprosin levels lead to apoptosis and inflammation in pancreatic B cells (Lee et al. 2019), and to inflammation and ER stress in the skeletal muscle cells (Jung et al. 2019). However, further in vivo validation is required for these functional aspects