Effect of mirabegron treatment on subcataneous adipose tissue (thigh) gene expression

The goal of this study was to determine the effect of treatment of obese humans with the beta 3-adrenergic receptor (B3AR) agonist mirabegron on thigh subcutaneous adipose gene tissue expression. The adipose biopsies were obtained before and after mirabegron treatment from 10 of the research participants studied in Finlin et al JCI 2020 (PMID: 31961829). We observed that mirabegron treatment improved glucose homeostasis by increasing insulin sensitivity and beta cell function. The B3AR has a resticted tissue distribution with one of the known sites being white adipose tissue. We hypothesized that the mechanism for the effects on glucose metabolism involve favorable effects on adipose tissue such as reduced inflammation. We performed RNAseq to identify changes in gene expression to gain understanding of the mechanism. Adipose tissues were obtained from the same subject before and after mirabegron treatement. RNA-seq was performed on each sample and the data were analyzed as paired data.