A drug for high blood pressure could inspire future treatments for people with normal readings, thanks to an unexpected effect on the body’s energy-burning fat.
Losartan already helps people control high blood pressure. New research suggests it could have a second use in activating brown fat, a tissue that burns energy to produce heat and is linked to better cardiovascular health. With a well-known safety profile, the drug could offer a practical way to investigate whether stimulating this tissue can bring health benefits to patients.
That possibility emerged from medical records and PET/CT scans of more than 100,000 patients at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC). Researchers noticed that patients taking angiotensin receptor blockers, or ARBs, a class of blood pressure medications that includes losartan, were more likely to have brown fat detected on their scans.
The study, published in Nature, brought together researchers in Rockefeller University’s Laboratory of Molecular Metabolism, led by Paul Cohen, and MSKCC researchers Heiko Schöder and Daniel Lafontaine. To understand what might explain the medication link, they worked backward from the patient observations to experiments in the lab. Cohen’s team has often used this approach, known as reverse translation, to investigate how brown fat works.
Losartan’s metabolic effects follow a separate pathway
When the researchers tested losartan in cultured brown fat cells, the drug directly increased their metabolic activity. It did so through molecular interactions distinct from those responsible for lowering blood pressure.
“The fact that its different effects are mediated by different molecular pathways is advantageous, since it means we could potentially isolate them in future therapies,” says first author Nicolás Gómez-Banoy, an endocrinologist and instructor in clinical investigation in Cohen’s lab. “That way you would be able to stimulate brown fat in people with normal blood pressure.”
Healthy mice treated with losartan also used more energy, consumed more oxygen, and produced more carbon dioxide, all while maintaining a steady body weight. These experiments support exploring a new use for the drug, although they do not establish that giving losartan to people to stimulate brown fat would improve their health.
Brown fat linked to lower depression rates
The human findings give researchers several connections to investigate. Alongside its links to cardiovascular health, brown fat was associated with lower rates of anxiety and depression, a connection to psychiatric health reported for the first time in this study.
“We know that metabolically healthy people tend to have lower incidence of psychiatric diseases, so it could be that having brown fat makes you more metabolically healthy, and this correlates with fewer psychiatric issues,” says Gómez-Banoy.
The analysis also linked SSRIs, medications commonly prescribed for depression, to reduced brown fat activity. How these observations fit together remains an open question, including whether brown fat itself contributes to the differences in mental health.
Earlier work had focused more narrowly on the heart and metabolism. In 2021, Cohen’s lab examined roughly 50,000 MSKCC patients and found that those with more brown fat had significantly lower odds of cardiometabolic diseases, including coronary artery disease and type 2 diabetes.
“We only looked for a few diagnostic codes in that study, mainly focusing on cardiovascular disease since that’s what this tissue has historically been associated with,” says Cohen. “The scope of this new analysis is far more expansive. We doubled our number of patients and considered more than 500 codes, which allowed us to unearth many new insights.”
Brown fat’s health links vary by location
The current study also looked beyond whether brown fat appeared on a scan to examine where it was active. The patients had undergone PET/CT scans as part of their cancer surveillance. Focusing on scans that detected brown adipose tissue, or BAT, Gómez-Banoy applied a machine learning tool developed by colleagues at MSKCC to measure its total activity in each patient and its activity in six anatomical regions. These included the neck, armpits, and areas surrounding the heart and kidneys.
Measuring those regions separately revealed that the relationship with disease varied depending on where the brown fat was located. The researchers also compared brown fat with indicators of blood sugar regulation, blood fats, heart function, and inflammation.
“For example, the axillary, or armpit, area was linked to a decreased risk of high blood pressure compared to other regions,” he says. “But overall, patients with brown fat have better glycemic parameters, lipid profiles, and echocardiographic indices, as well as lower inflammatory markers.”
Brown fat was also associated with higher rates of osteoporosis and skin diseases, raising questions about possible downsides. Further research could investigate those associations, examine the genetics of people with high BAT levels, and explore the connection to anxiety and depression.
“There were plenty of other medications associated with brown fat activity in our large cohort,” Cohen notes. “This is just a start.”
Reference: “Artificial intelligence-enabled clinical phenotyping of human brown fat” by Nicolás Gómez-Banoy, Jorge A. Barrero, Luiza Rachel Pinheiro de Carvalho, Caroline S. Jiang, Tara Doma Lama, Nakul Karandikar, Mascha Koenen, Tiffany Lam, Kaja Plucińska, Ksenia Morozova, Stephanie Chahwan, Gustavo Barraza, Burcin Agridag Ucpinar, Jennifer E. Liu, Rohit Sharma, Daniel Lafontaine, Heiko Schöder and Paul Cohen, 14 October 2026, Nature.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-11162-7
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