Autophagy in adipose tissues greatly influence on metabolic pathways, the substrates of which are re-generated and released after autophagy. For instance, genetic mutation of p62/SQSTM1 involved in the TG accumulation in hepatocytes leads to the abnormality of bone metabolism, which is referred to as Paget disease. Further, exercise promotes autophagy in muscle cells, adipocytes, and pancreatic beta cells secreting insulin, thereby normalizing the insulin-resistance due to high-fat diet. Interestingly enough, the depletion of Atg7, which is specific to autophagy in adipose tissues, leads to the increased number of brown adipocytes with enhanced UCP1 activity. Collectively, the autophagy in adipose tissues is related to the metabolic change in several distant organs.

Dear Go J, thank you for the answer! Could you please provide a reference to the picture you posted or is it your own unpublished image?

So the data indicate that decrease in the autophagy leads to the decrease of body weight via induction of WAT to BAT transition, right? And so the answer to the question would be - no, it´s not beneficial to induce autophagy in adipocytes to achieve reduction of body fat mass. Correct me if I am wrong...

In fact, induction of autophagy is associated to adypocyte dysfunction in mice fed a high-fat diet, and dysregulation of autophagy has been linked to  to the hypertrophy and whitening of adipose tissue in obesity, while autophagy deficiency appears to protect from obesity and insulin resistence.

You should read these papers, among others:

Metabolic remodeling of white adipose tissue in obesity. Cummins TD, Holden CR, Sansbury BE, Gibb AA, Shah J, Zafar N, Tang Y, Hellmann J, Rai SN, Spite M, Bhatnagar A, Hill BG. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. 2014 Aug 1;307(3):E262-77

Mineralocorticoid receptor antagonism induces browning of white adipose tissue through impairment of autophagy and prevents adipocyte dysfunction in high-fat-diet-fed mice. Armani A, Cinti F, Marzolla V, Morgan J, Cranston GA, Antelmi A, Carpinelli G, Canese R, Pagotto U, Quarta C, Malorni W, Matarrese P, Marconi M, Fabbri A, Rosano G, Cinti S, Young MJ, Caprio M. FASEB J. 2014 Aug;28(8):3745-57.

Adipose tissue dysfunction contributes to obesity related metabolic diseases. Blüher M. Best Pract Res Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2013 Apr;27(2):163-77.

Autophagy deficiency leads to protection from obesity and insulin resistance by inducing Fgf21 as a mitokine. Kim KH, Jeong YT, Oh H, Kim SH, Cho JM, Kim YN, Kim SS, Kim do H, Hur KY, Kim HK, Ko T, Han J, Kim HL, Kim J, Back SH, Komatsu M, Chen H, Chan DC, Konishi M, Itoh N, Choi CS, Lee MS. Nat Med. 2013 Jan;19(1):83-92.

Hi,

I think that the best person to answer this is Arya Sharma who is now in Canada workign on obesity. We discussed these issues many years ago when he was still in Berlin at the Humbolt University.

Segundo

Autophagy is not the answer on obesity related disease state. Diet induced Obesity is an inflammatory disease and epigenetic insult is the cause of DIO.