Adipose tissue hormones and the regulation of food intake.

Over the past decade, adipose tissue has been shown to produce numerous factors that act as hormones. Many of these act on the brain to regulate energy balance via dual effects on food intake and energy expenditure. These include well-characterised hormones such as leptin, oestrogen and glucocorticoids and novel factors such as adiponectin and resistin. This review provides a perspective on the role of these factors as lipostats.