Thursday December 6

Abdominal Fat Enzyme May Yield Obesity Drugs

By Merritt McKinney

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - An enzyme involved in hormone production may help explain why obese people who carry most of their extra weight around their middle have such a high risk of heart disease and other health problems, new research suggests.

The findings may lead to new approaches to treating obesity and its complications, one of the study's athors told Reuters Health.

It is no news that obesity increases the risk of health problems such as heart disease and diabetes, but where these extra pounds accumulate on the body also matters. So-called ''apple-shaped'' people, who tend to gain weight around the waist and torso, are more likely to develop certain health conditions than ``pear-shaped'' people, whose extra pounds settle on their hips, buttocks and thighs.

The apple shape is linked to health problems related to metabolism, such as high blood pressure and insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes. The reason for this has been a mystery.

One suspected factor is an excess of hormones called glucocorticoids. These hormones are elevated in apple-shaped obese people, but not in those who are more pear-shaped.

An enzyme called 11-beta HSD-1 is involved in the formation of glucocorticoids, so Dr. Jeffrey S. Flier of Harvard Medical School (news - web sites) in Boston, Massachusetts, and colleagues engineered a strain of mice to produce extra amounts of the enzyme.

Compared with normal mice, these animals developed abdominal obesity as well as many of the health problems that often come with it, the researchers report in the December 7th issue of Science.

``Alteration in the levels of a single enzyme in fat of mice produces not only obesity, but obesity especially of abdominal fat,'' Flier told Reuters Health.

Since this enzyme is known to be similarly elevated in the fat of obese people, it is ``very likely,'' Flier said, that the same pathway is involved in many cases of human obesity.

Blocking the enzyme, according to the Harvard scientist, ''may be an important new tool for treating obesity and its complications.''

SOURCE: Science 2001;294:2166-2170.


http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/200...l/enzyme_1.html