Wed, May-04-11, 00:36
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Plan: Muscle Centric
Stats: 238/153/160
BF:
Progress: 109%
Location: UK
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Scientists turn 'bad fat' into 'good fat'
Quote:
From BBC News Online
May 3, 2011
Scientists turn 'bad fat' into 'good fat'
Scientists say they have found a way to turn body fat into a better type of fat that burns off calories and weight.
The US Johns Hopkins team made the breakthrough in rats but believe the same could be done in humans, offering the hope of a new way to treat obesity.
Modifying the expression of a protein linked to appetite not only reduced the animals' calorie intake and weight, but also transformed their fat composition.
"Bad" white fat became "good" brown fat, Cell Metabolism journal reports.
Brown fat is abundant in babies, which they use as a power source to generate body heat, expending calories at the same time.
But as we age our brown fat largely disappears and gets replaced by "bad" white fat, which typically sits as a spare tyre around the waist.
Experts have reasoned that stimulating the body to make more brown fat rather than white fat could be a helpful way to control weight and prevent obesity and its related health problems like type 2 diabetes.
Novel approach
Various teams have been searching for a way to do this, and Dr Sheng Bi and colleagues at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine believe they may have cracked it.
They designed an experiment to see if suppressing an appetite-stimulating protein called NPY would decrease body weight in rats.
When they silenced NPY in the brains of the rodents they found their appetite and food intake decreased.
Even when the rats were fed a very rich, high-fat diet they still managed to keep more weight off than rats who had fully functioning NPY.
The scientists then checked the fat composition of the rats and found an interesting change had occurred.
In the rats with silenced NPY expression, some of the bad white fat had been replaced with good brown fat.
The researchers are hopeful that it may be possible to achieve the same effect in people by injecting brown fat stem cells under the skin to burn white fat and stimulate weight loss.
Dr Bi said: "If we could get the human body to turn bad fat into good fat that burns calories instead of storing them, we could add a serious new tool to tackle the obesity epidemic.
"Only future research will tell us if that is possible."
Dr Jeremy Tomlinson, an expert at the University of Birmingham's Centre for Obesity Research, said: "This is exciting, novel and interesting.
"We will need a lot more work to tease this out, but it could offer a feasible way to develop new treatments for obesity."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13266196
Quote:
Knockdown of NPY Expression in the Dorsomedial Hypothalamus Promotes Development of Brown Adipocytes and Prevents Diet-Induced Obesity
Hypothalamic neuropeptide Y (NPY) has been implicated in control of energy balance, but the physiological importance of NPY in the dorsomedial hypothalamus (DMH) remains unclear. Here we report that knockdown of NPY expression in the DMH by adeno-associated virus-mediated RNAi reduced fat depots in rats fed regular chow and ameliorated high-fat diet-induced hyperphagia and obesity. DMH NPY knockdown resulted in development of brown adipocytes in inguinal white adipose tissue through the sympathetic nervous system. This knockdown increased uncoupling protein 1 expression in both inguinal fat and interscapular brown adipose tissue (BAT). Consistent with the activation of BAT, DMH NPY knockdown increased energy expenditure and enhanced the thermogenic response to a cold environment. This knockdown also increased locomotor activity, improved glucose homeostasis, and enhanced insulin sensitivity. Together, these results demonstrate critical roles of DMH NPY in body weight regulation through affecting food intake, body adiposity, thermogenesis, energy expenditure, and physical activity.
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http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism...4131(11)00145-8 |
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