Lean for lifeApril 23, 2007Baby formula that fights fat Infant formula and other baby foods that provide permanent protection from obesity and diabetes into adulthood could be on shop shelves soon, reports Lisa Melton in Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI. The foods, under development at the Clore Laboratory at the University of Buckingham, will be supplemented with leptin, the hunger hormone. Those who take the foods early in life should remain permanently slim. 'Like those people who are lean by nature even though they overeat ? like we all do - they will tend to be inefficient in terms of using energy,' says Mike Cawthorne, who heads the Metabolic Research group at Clore. Cawthorne's group has already demonstrated that supplementing infant rats' diets with leptin means that they never get fat or develop diabetes (AM J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol, doi: 10.1152/ajpregu.00676.2006). Even animals fed a high-fat diet remained slim. Leptin, the fat hormone that turns off hunger in the brain, is produced in the body throughout life. Its discovery was heralded as a major breakthrough, but research in adults proved disappointing because individuals soon seemed to resist its hunger-quenching effect. But Cawthorne says this time things are different. Providing leptin earlier enough effectively hard-wires the body's energy balance. In fact, whether one is fat or thin may be determined before birth. Feeding the hormone to pregnant rats has been found to have a lifelong impact on their offspring's predisposition to obesity. Animals born of leptin-treated mothers remain lean even when fed a fat-laden diet, while those from untreated dams gained weight and developed diabetes. The difference boils down to energy expenditure. The offspring of leptin-treated mothers burn up more energy. 'The infants are permanently inefficient in terms of using energy,' says Cawthorne. Leptin-based products may also find their way into the pet obesity market. Edinburgh researcher Jonathan Seckl says. 'We need to know whether leptin is acting pre- and post-natally, figure out how it works, and dissect the possible side-effects before this becomes a potential approach for humans. Nonetheless, this is good science,' he says. Society of Chemical Industry |
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| Related Leptin Current Events and Leptin News Articles Scientists find obesity alone does not cause arthritis in animals The link between obesity and osteoarthritis may be more than just the wear and tear on the skeleton caused by added weight. Researchers identify new brain pathway for regulating weight and bone mass Contrary to the prevailing view, the hormone leptin, which is critical for normal food intake and metabolism, appears to regulate bone mass and suppress appetite by acting mainly through serotonin pathways in the brain. Fish fend off invading germs with an initial response similar to the one found in people Since the human response to infection is highly complex, research to understand how people fight infection is facilitated by studying how similar processes occur in simpler organisms. Ice cream may target the brain before your hips, UT Southwestern study suggests Blame your brain for sabotaging your efforts to get back on track after splurging on an extra scoop of ice cream or that second burger during Friday night's football game. New information about how fat increases blood pressure could help identify those at risk Some of the first information about how fat causes hypertension have been identified by researchers who say the findings should one day help identify which obese people - and maybe some thin ones too - are at risk for hypertension and which drugs would work best for them. Caltech researchers pinpoint neurons that control obesity in fruit flies A team of scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have pinpointed two groups of neurons in fruit fly brains that have the ability to sense and manipulate the fly's fat stores in much the same way as do neurons in the mammalian brain. Scarring key to link between obesity and diabetes The team, in collaboration with University Hospital Aintree, the University of Warwick and researchers in Sweden, found that people classified as obese and those with pre-diabetes have raised levels of a protein called SPARC, that can cause tissue scarring. Obesity increases risk of prostate cancer recurrence for both blacks and whites A new look at a large database of prostate cancer patients shows that obesity plays no favorites when it comes to increasing the risk of recurrence after surgery: Being way overweight is equally bad for blacks and whites, say researchers at Duke University Medical Center. Study further expands understanding of leptin's role in brain neurocircuitry In investigating the complex neurocircuitry behind weight gain and glucose control, scientists have known that the hormone leptin plays a key role in the process. Sleep may be factor in weight control Could sleep be a critical component to maintaining a healthy body weight? More Leptin Current Events and Leptin News Articles |
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