From the article:
This early preclinical study in female mice demonstrated that removing estrogen regulator alpha alone was enough to reduce the immune system’s protective process and promote increased fat accumulation and accelerate atherosclerosis development. Without this protein, the mice developed additional aspects of metabolic syndrome such as glucose intolerance, insulin resistance and inflammation.
This estrogen receptor is also expressed in many other non-reproductive tissues such as fat, muscle and liver and can also act independent of the hormone estrogen. However, little is known about the receptor’s actions in these tissues that are involved in blood-sugar regulation, which plays an integral role in metabolic syndrome.
[…]
“Impairment of this receptor’s function could also play a role in the heightened incidence of metabolic syndrome being seen in younger women,”