Beef Burger. Credit: wEnDaLicious/ flickr

By Rich Bowden:

An Australian research team has taken a radically new approach to weight loss, preventing the body from receiving hunger signals rather than preventing the brain from sending them.

Observing that drugs which try to mask hunger signals from the brain are mostly ineffective, the team, led by Professor Herbert Herzog and his colleagues Dr Lei Zhang and Dr Amanda Sainsbury-Salis at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, have had success in the testing of mice by blocking receptors in fat cells.

According to a news release from the Garvan Institute: “In the control of appetite and energy expenditure, the brain normally acts as a master controller, telling us when we are hungry or have eaten enough, instructing one group of cells to burn fat, another to conserve it. This happens through the neuropeptide Y (NPY) system, neurotransmitters in the brain sending signals to receptors throughout the body.”

“In the past, neuroscientists have attempted to curtail appetite by blocking NPY signals sent from the brain. Unfortunately, we are so hard-wired to eat that the brain finds ways to evade the blocks, using alternative paths along which to signal,” the statement added.

Professor Herzog said the concentration of blocking the body from receiving hunger signals, and not attempting to block the brain from sending them, had significant advantages.

“You fight a losing battle when you try to stop the brain from sending signals, so it makes better sense just to prevent peripheral tissues from receiving them,” said Herzog.

“The NPY system also plays quite a large role in the stress response as well as appetite and satiety, so if you start blocking one area, you risk side effects in another.”

‘No side effects’

He said by reversing the approach, the tested mice lost fat and not their muscle tissue and appeared to suffer no side effects from the treatment.

“We’ve shown here that if you only interfere with the peripheral receptors, you will receive beneficial effects on the general energy balance of the body without interfering with the appetite side.”

“We noted that the mice lost fat, rather than muscle, yet continued to eat as normal. There were also no apparent side effects.”

“The really advantageous thing about this research is that many drugs are quite difficult to get into the brain, but easy to get into circulation, and so to peripheral tissue.”

The team’s findings have been published in the International Journal of Obesity.

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Tags: brain fat, fat, fat controller, garvan institute, npy, weightloss