Direct animal calorimetry, the underused gold standard for quantifying the fire of life

Direct animal calorimetty, the gold standard method for quantifying animal heat production (HP), has been largely supplanted by respirometric indirect calorimetry owing to the relative ease and ready commercial availability of the latter technique. Direct calorimetry, however, can accurately quantify HP and thus metabolic rate (MR) in both metabolically normal and abnormal states, whereas respirometric indirect calorimetry relies on important assumptions that apparently have never been tested in animals with genetic or pharmacologically-induced alterations that dysregulate metabolic fuel partitioning and storage so as to promote obesity and/or diabetes. Contemporary obesity and diabetes research relies heavily on metabolically abnormal animals. Recent data implicating individual and group variation in the gut microbiome in obesity and diabetes raise important questions about transforming aerobic gas exchange into HP because 99% of gut bacteria are anaerobic and they outnumber eukaryotic cells in the body by similar to 10-fold. Recent credible work in non-standard laboratory animals documents substantial errors in respirometry-based estimates of HP. Accordingly, it seems obvious that new research employing simultaneous direct and indirect calorimetry (total calorimetry) will be essential to validate respirometric MR phenotyping in existing and future pharmacological and genetic models of obesity and diabetes. We also detail the use of total calorimetry with simultaneous core temperature assessment as a model for studying homeostatic control in a variety of experimental situations, including acute and chronic drug administration. Finally, we offer some tips on performing direct calorimetry, both singly and in combination with indirect calorimetry and core temperature assessment. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.