Sunday, September 30, 2012

Obesity cure claim by Irish and US researchers from Trinity and Harvard

Irish scientists believe they have reached a pivotal point in their research into the battle against obesity.

The research carried out by Trinity College Dublin, St Vincent's Hospital and Harvard University found that a type of anti-tumor immune cell protects against obesity and the metabolic syndrome that leads to diabetes.

They have discovered that a lipid, “aGC”, can bring a major improvement to metabolism, weight loss and fatty liver disease. It can also reverse diabetes.

Their results show that immune cells known to be protective against malignancy are lost when people become obese. However they are restored with weight loss.

These invariant natural killer T-cells (iNKT) had been thought to be rare in humans until work found they were plentiful in human omental fat.

Dr. Lydia Lynch is from Trinity College Dublin said “We then found a large population of iNKT cells in fat tissue from mice...

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Heat-processed food ups obesity, diabetes risk

Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have identified a common compound in heat-processed food that could play a major role in the development of abdominal obesity, insulin resistance, and type 2 diabetes.

The research team, led by Helen Vlassara, MD, Professor and Director of the Division of Experimental Diabetes and Aging, found that mice with sustained exposure to the compound, methyl-glyoxal (MG), developed significant abdominal weight gain, early insulin resistance, and type 2 diabetes....

Super Muscular Mice Could Help Treat Diabetes, Make You Buff

Researchers can make Mighty Mice by tinkering with their proteins before they are born, a new study suggests. These super mice have bigger and stronger muscles than their normal counterparts later in life.

The protein the researchers blocked, called Grb10, seems to regulate muscle development, since the researchers only changed the protein while the mice were in the womb. When they turned off the protein during development, the researchers saw more muscle and stronger muscle in the mice when they become adults.

They found that, instead of larger muscle fibers, the mice had a greater number of muscle fibers — the individual segments that make up the muscles.

The finding actually comes out of a diabetes and obesity research program — this protein responds to insulin signals, and muscularity seems to go along with other traits that seem to protect a person from diabetes. These include how the body handles sugars and fats and how well it responds to insulin....

How 'beige' fat makes the pounds melt away

Researchers from the University of Bonn and the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried have decoded a signal path that could boost the burning of body fat. Mice that are missing a signal switch called VASP are clearly leaner and have more of the coveted brown and beige-colored fat cells that convert energy into heat. This might point the way to a new method for fighting obesity. The researchers presented their results in the current issue of the renowned journal Science Signaling.


The numbers of obese people are climbing steeply all over the world – with obvious major consequences for their health. Due to excess food intake and a lack of physical activity, but also due to genetic factors, the risk for overweight people dying from diseases like coronary heart disease, diabetes und atherosclerosis increases. "The body's fat reserves are actually used as a place to store energy that allows surviving lean times," says Prof. Dr. Alexander Pfeifer, Director of the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology of the University of Bonn. "But nowadays, hardly anyone in the industrialized nations is exposed to such hunger phases anymore."


A signal path boosts the burning of fat in the body


Since many people ingest more energy in their diet than they can burn, many harbor dreams of a magic pill that will simply make fat melt away. Now, scientists around Prof. Pfeifer – in collaboration with colleagues from Epileptology and from the PharmaCenter Bonn, together with the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried - have discovered a signal path in the metabolism of mice that is indeed able to greatly boost combustion inside the rodents' bodies....

Antibiotic use in early life linked to obesity

A new study has confirmed the theory that low doses of antibiotic drugs may alter the composition and function of the bacteria in the gut, causing weight gain through changes in metabolism.

Researchers administered sub-therapeutic antibiotic therapy to mice and a control group. After approximately six weeks, the mice receiving antibiotics had gained around 10% to 15% more fat mass than the mice not receiving antibiotics....

Tackling obesity by manipulating gut flora

Antibiotics could one day be the standard treatment for regulating weight, suggests a new study in Nature Immunology that examines the interactions between diet, the bacteria in our gut, and our immune systems.


The 500 different types of bacteria present in our gut provide the enzymes necessary for the uptake of nutrients, synthesize certain vitamins and boost absorption of energy from food. Last century, farmers learned that by tweaking the microbial mix in their livestock with low-dose oral antibiotics, they could accelerate weight gain.

In the new study, researchers at the University of Chicago found they were able to manipulate some of the mechanisms that regulate weight gain. They focused on the relationship between the immune system, gut bacteria, digestion and obesity. Their findings show how weight gain requires not just caloric overload but also a delicate, adjustable - and transmissible - interplay between intestinal microbes and the immune response.

"Diet-induced obesity depends not just on calories ingested but also on the host's microbiome," said the study's senior author Yang-Xin Fu, professor of pathology at the University of Chicago Medical Center. "For most people, host digestion is not completely efficient, but changes in the gut flora can raise or lower digestive efficiency."

In one experiment, the researchers compared normal mice with mice that have a genetic defect that renders them unable to produce lymphotoxin, a molecule that helps to regulate interactions between the immune system and bacteria in the bowel. On a standard diet, both groups of mice maintained a steady weight. But after nine weeks on a high-fat diet, the normal mice increased their weight by one-third, most of it fat. Mice lacking lymphotoxin ate just as much, but did not gain weight....

Study in mice discovers injection of heat-generating cells reduces belly fat

The injection of a tiny capsule containing heat-generating cells into the abdomens of mice led those animals to burn abdominal fat and initially lose about 20 percent of belly fat after 80 days of treatment.


Researchers conducting the study were surprised to see that the injected cells even acted like "missionaries," converting existing belly fat cells into so-called thermogenic cells, which use fat to generate heat.


Over time, the mice gained back some weight. But they resisted any dramatic weight gain on a high-fat diet and burned away more than a fifth of the cells that make up their visceral fat, which surrounds the organs and is linked to higher risk for Type 2 diabetes, cancer and heart disease....

Weird science: Fat capsule injections could make you thinner

This just in from Ohio State University: fat plus more fat equals thin. In other words, if you've been trying to lose weight by adding less fat to your body, you've been doing it all wrong.

Your body stores a couple different kinds of fat. There's white fat, or visceral fat, which is that fatty "fat" fat that you have to be careful of. There is also brown fat, or "good" fat, which is related to muscle and can burn fat to generate heat.

Researchers at Ohio State took a small gel-like capsule full of specially engineered brown fat cells and implanted it into an obese mouse, expecting that the cells in the capsule would start burning fat. What they didn't expect was that the cells in the capsule would act like "missionaries," converting existing white fat cells into brown fat. The result was that the obese mice in the study lost about 20 percent of belly bulge after 80 days, even while continuing to eat excessive saturated fat. There were no immune responses to the implants and no side-effects: the mice just got less fat, and stayed that way, without changing their lifestyle....

No Fat Mice in This Lab

Two microRNAs have been identified as potential therapeutic targets for obesity. Researchers at Virginia Tech and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas have shown that mice genetically engineered to lack microRNA-378 (miR-378) and miR-378* are remarkably resistant to obesity when fed a high-fat diet, and are metabolically more capable of converting food into energy than wild-type littermates....

Carefully scheduled diets 'combat obesity better than fat reduction'

New research has shown that scheduling food consumption in a way that improves metabolic efficiency could be the best way of preventing obesity.

A team from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has carried out research using mice which shows that a scheduled high-fat diet can offer greater benefits than an unscheduled low-fat diet with the same number of calories....

Scientists develop herb-based anti-obesity medicine

A group of South Korean scientists has developed a new herb-based medicine that can help prevent and even cure obesity that has also been proven safe, the science ministry said Thursday.

The medicine uses a mixture of substances extracted from perennial plants that are already familiar to oriental medicine, according to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.

The new substance, called POCUb, boosts activities by the AMP-activated protein kinase that dissolves body fat while suppressing the activity of an enzyme, known as phosphodiesterase, that causes the accumulation of body fat.

A series of animal tests showed the effectiveness of the new herbal medicine in both preventing and curing obesity, a leading cause of death throughout the world, the developers from the Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine said.

A group of mice treated with the medicine gained up to 61 percent less body weight compared to controlled groups, reflecting the substance's effectiveness in preventing obesity....

Fat fighters found in fat tissue

Researchers at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have found that a type of immune system cell once thought rare in humans is actually plentiful in fat cells and protects against obesity and the metabolic syndrome that leads to diabetes.

Research published online today in the journal Immunity finds that invariant natural killer T-cells (iNKT), immune cells known to influence inflammatory responses, are lost when humans become obese but can be restored through weight loss. The work suggests that therapies that activate iNKT cells could help manage obesity, diabetes, and metabolic disease.

iNKT cells had been thought to be rare in humans until work by Lydia Lynch, a research fellow in medicine at Beth Israel, found they were plentiful in human fat, also known as adipose tissue.

“Our previous work had revealed a large population of iNKT cells in fat tissue in both mice and humans,” said Lynch, a research fellow in the Department of Hematology/Oncology at BIDMC and the study’s first author. “Now we have identified them in mice and identified a role for them in the regulation of body weight and the metabolic state, likely by regulating inflammation in adipose tissue.”...

Study finds that natural killer T-cells in fat tissue guard against obesity


Invariant natural killer T-cells (iNKT) are a unique subset of immune cells that are known to influence inflammatory responses. Now, a scientific team led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) has found that iNKT cells play a protective role in guarding against obesity and the metabolic syndrome, a major consequence of obesity.

Their discovery, published on-line today in the journal Immunity, also finds that although iNKT cells are lost when humans become obese, they can be restored through weight loss, and further suggests that therapies that activate iNKT cells could help manage obesity, diabetes and metabolic disease.

iNKT cells had been thought to be rare in humans until work by Lydia Lynch, PhD, found they were plentiful in human adipose (fat) tissue.

"Our previous work had revealed a large population of iNKT cells in fat tissue in both mice and humans,"...

Study: High-fat diet can prevent obesity in mice

In completely counter-intuitive research, scientists at the Hebrew University have found that high-fat meals served at the same time and for the same length of time every day can “reset” metabolism and prevent obesity – that is, at least in laboratory mice....

Drinking green tea helps prevent obesity - study confirms

Drinking green tea helps prevent obesity or weight loss, which is known for some time. A new laboratory study in the Food and Agricultural Chemistry has confirmed the notion that green tea prevents obesity.

M. Ueda and H. Ashida of Graduate School of Agricultural Science, Kobe University in Kobe, Hyogo, Japan tested the expression levels of obesity-related proteins in mesenteric white adipose tissue from C5BL/6 mice fed a high fat diet....

U of A research could lead to obesity treatment breakthrough

New University of Alberta research — only yet done on mice — has shown a new gene therapy could one day help obese people lose weight, become more active and fight Type 2 diabetes....

Brain neurons and diet influence onset of obesity and diabetes in mice

A lack of AgRP-neurons, brain cells known to be involved in the control of food intake, leads to obesity if mice are fed a regular carbohydrate diet. However, animals that are deficient in AgRP-neurons but which are raised on a high-fat diet are leaner and healthier. The differences are due to the influence of the AgRP-neurons on the way other tissues in the body break down and store nutrients. Mice lacking AgRP-neurons adapt poorly to a carbohydrate diet and their metabolism seems better suited for feeding on fat.
"Susceptibility to obesity and other metabolic diseases is mostly thought to be due to complex genetic interactions and the radical environmental changes that have occurred during the last century. However, it is not just a question of what you eat and your genetic makeup but also how the body manages to convert, store and use food nutrients," commented Serge Luquet, lead author of the study and a researcher at the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) Unit of Functional and Adaptive Biology, Université Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité...

New Target for Obesity-Related Disorders

Inhibiting a microRNA that is overexpressed in obese mice and human patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and type II diabetes could provide a new approach to treating metabolic disorders and even potentially cancer, scientists claim. A team at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign has shown that treating obese mice with an antisense inhibitor of miR-34a corrects the obesity-related abnormal expression of metabolic genes involved in bile acid, glucose, and fat metabolism, and led to reduced liver fat levels and the restoration of glycogen levels and insulin sensitivity...