ANTI-OBESITY Vaccine?
Researchers are looking at a hormone
called GHRELIN to influence the signal from the gut to the brain to eat.
When you diet, your body ramps up ghrelin production, which may slow
down your metabolism, encourage eating and force your body to retain
fat. Researches have found that
keeping ghrelin from reaching the brain may prevent weight gain.
The study shows our vaccine slows weight
gain and decreases stored fat in rats |
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The new weight-loss vaccine, which
is directed against the hormone ghrelin (pronounced "grell-in"), a
naturally occurring hormone that helps regulate energy balance in the
body, has shown the potential, in animal models at least, to put an end
to that risky and often futile struggle.
A vaccine against ghrelin also is particularly compelling in terms of
the well-documented problems of human dieting. When you diet, the
body responds as if it was starving and produces ghrelin to slow down
fat metabolism and stimulate eating, changes meant to help retain and
regain body fat.As a result,
many people end up regaining the weight they lost and more once
they go off their diets. This vaccine may have the real potential
to prevent or seriously reduce yo-yo dieting, the repetitive cycle of
weight loss and gain, because it interferes with ghrelin's ability to
promote weight gain and fat accumulation.
Obesity remains a serious and
growing problem for millions of people worldwide and is a contributing
risk factor for a number of other diseases including heart disease,
various cancers, Type 2 diabetes, stroke, arthritis, and depression.
Although a number of pharmaceutical approaches have been taken to try to
help people better control their body weight, few if any have been
successful and several, including the drugs fenfluamine (a component of
"Fen-Phen") and ephedrine, have been pulled from the market by the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration.
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