Weight loss all in the mind?
2006-01-16 09:01
Paris - Scientists in the United States say they have identified a compound in the brain that appears to play a key role in the drive to eat and could prove a useful weapon in the combat against obesity.
The chemical, a fatty acid called malonyl coenzyme A, is produced in the hypothalamus - a part of the brain which receives signals from the digestive system about the body's nutritional state and which initiates the desire to eat or stop eating.
The team used a de-activated cold virus to deliver into the brains of lab rats an enzyme that degrades malonyl coenzyme A.
Levels of the fatty acid fell, prompting the rats to gobble up more food and become obese, roughly doubling in body weight over the course of the 18-week experiment.
The implication is that people who have insufficient levels of malonyl coenzyme A may become unrestrained eaters, according to the study, which is published online on Sunday in the specialist journal Nature Neuroscience.
Boosting levels of it could help them to eat moderately, it suggests.
The authors are led by Luciano Rossetti of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.
The research adds to previous studies, all in the early phase, that have pinpointed hormones that suppress or stimulate appetites.
The ultimate hope is to devise drugs that regulate the biochemical pathways that stimulate or suppress appetite among the obese.