Adropin
Adropin is a hormone made mainly by the liver and brain that helps the body burn fat and use glucose efficiently - levels are usually lower in obesity and insulin resistance.
Plain English
Patient-Friendly Explanation
Adropin is a relatively new hormone, identified in 2008, produced mainly in the liver and in the brain. Its job is to help the body switch between burning fat and burning glucose, keeping blood sugar steady and limiting how much fat gets stored - especially in the liver. In people carrying excess weight, and in people with type 2 diabetes or fatty liver, circulating adropin tends to be lower than in lean, metabolically healthy people, and the lower it is, the more insulin resistant they tend to be. It is not a test you can order as part of routine care, but it explains something important: as you lose weight, exercise more and improve insulin sensitivity, adropin levels generally rise. Adropin is one more piece of evidence that obesity is a disorder of hormone and energy signalling rather than a failure of willpower.
Medical
Clinical Definition
Adropin is a 76-amino-acid secreted peptide encoded by the energy homeostasis-associated gene (ENHO), expressed predominantly in hepatocytes and in neurons of the brain, including the hypothalamus and nucleus accumbens. It signals through the GPR19 receptor and regulates substrate preference in skeletal muscle and liver: it upregulates CD36 and promotes fatty acid oxidation while suppressing lipogenesis, and improves whole-body insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance in rodent models. In humans, lower circulating adropin concentrations are consistently reported in obesity, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, MASLD and polycystic ovary syndrome, and adropin correlates inversely with HOMA-IR, triglycerides and hs-CRP, and positively with HDL cholesterol and insulin sensitivity indices. In MASLD, lower adropin associates with greater hepatic steatosis and fibrosis severity. Adropin rises after aerobic and resistance exercise training, after weight loss and after improvements in glycaemic control, suggesting it is a marker of metabolic flexibility rather than a fixed trait. Adropin assays are currently research-grade only; there is no validated clinical reference range and it is not used for diagnosis or monitoring in routine practice.
Key Insight
Why It Matters
Adropin is one of the signals that tells your body whether to burn or store fuel, and it improves measurably with weight loss and exercise. We do not measure it in clinic, but we do measure the things it tracks - your waist, fasting glucose and liver enzymes - and those are what we act on.
Sources
Reviewed against standard medical references.
Medically reviewed by
Family Physician & Registered Acupuncturist, Accord Medical Clinic. MBBS (NUS), Graduate Diploma in Family Medicine (NUS), Graduate Diploma in Acupuncture (Singapore College of TCM).
Last reviewed: September 2026
This page is general health education, not medical advice. Whether any treatment is appropriate for you is a decision made in consultation after assessment.
