Natural Brain Substance Blocks Weight Gain in Mice, Researchers Discover

piggy submitted, created time 1 year 7 months (www.sciencedaily.com)

Mice with increased levels of a natural brain chemical don't gain weight when fed a high-fat diet, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found.

The chemical, orexin, works by increasing the body's sensitivity to the "weight-loss hormone," leptin, the researchers report.

Finding a way to boost the orexin system may prove useful as a therapy against obesity, said Dr. Masashi Yanagisawa, professor of molecular genetics at UT Southwestern and senior author of the study, which appears in the January issue of Cell Metabolism.

1 comment | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: obesity neuroscience orexin leptin weight loss neurons weight management brain

Study raises hope for obesity treatment

sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 8 months (news.yahoo.com)

U.S. researchers may have found an obesity treatment that unlocks the fat-fighting promise of leptin, an appetite-suppressing hormone once hailed as the answer to the battle of the bulge.

2 comments | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: weight management appetite leptin obesity

Leptin and Amylin Agonism: a Hope for Diet-induced Obesity

davidd submitted, created time 2 years 3 months (www.pnas.org)

Body weight is regulated by complex neurohormonal interactions between endocrine signals of long-term adiposity (e.g., leptin, a hypothalamic signal) and short-term satiety (e.g., amylin, a hindbrain signal). Leptin has been placed too much hope on weight loss. It became a failure for weight loss in non-leptin-deficient, diet-induced obese (DIO) rodents and humans. Today, we have some good news for for the obese. This study reports that concurrent peripheral administration of amylin and leptin elicits synergistic, fat-specific weight loss in leptin-resistant, diet-induced obese rats.

1 comment | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: endocrinology food appetite hypothalamus Agonism Amylin Leptin obesity