This Review highlights adipose humoral and neuronal pathways that operate through inter-organ communication to regulate systemic metabolism, examines how physiological and pathological contexts shape these signals, and explores emerging technologies and translational opportunities for targeting adipose networks in metabolic disease.

Diagnosing and treating thyroid cancer often involves administering radioactive iodine, but in certain tumour types, reduced ability to take in iodine limits the efficacy of this technique. In this Review, the authors discuss how molecular aberrations in thyroid cancer affect iodine uptake and describe redifferentiation strategies that aim to improve the effectiveness of radioiodine administration.

Growing evidence suggests that hepatic nerves have an important role in liver function, in both health and disease. This Review explores the contribution of the hepatic sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems in the development of metabolic-associated steatotic liver disease and its progression to metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis and hepatocellular carcinoma.

Increasing evidence demonstrates that the proportions, quality and balance of macronutrients in the diet influence health and disease to a greater extent than the individual effects of these macronutrients. This Review introduces a framework for navigating the complexity of macronutrient mixtures, and discusses their role in energy intake, systemic physiology, body composition and health across the life course.

Although oxytocin is widely known as the ‘love hormone’, it is also released during social conflict, promoting acute social defence and facilitating neural circuit plasticity that heightens future social avoidance, vigilance and sensitivity to non-social stressors.

Cancer cachexia is a wasting syndrome that is associated with advanced cancer and causes high morbidity and mortality. Now, preclinical and clinical findings define cachexia as a systemic metabolic disorder beyond anorexia. Reframing cachexia as a treatable disease could contribute to increasing the quality of life and survival of patients.