An anti-obesity pill that helps the body burn calories could be on the horizon, a new study claims.
Researchers from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor say they have discovered a hormone that stops the body from burning fat, potentially predisposing some people to be dangerously overweight.
However, in experiments conducted on mice, blocking the hormone made the rodents lose more weight and improved their metabolic health.
The team says the findings could lead to treatments that help people shed pounds without having to go to the gym or undergo a drastic change in diet.
A pill to block a hormone that tops the body from burning fat,could be a new treatment to fight obesity, a new study says (file image)
The body sends out several hormones that tell us how much energy we should be using and calories that should be consumed.
Ghrelin increases appetite and tells the body to stop burning calories while energy stores are low, while leptin – sometimes called the satiety hormone – suppresses appetite and increasing calorie-burning.
They found a hormone called TSK, or tsukushi, in mice that is produced by the liver and stops the metabolism from working when the body is burning a great amount of energy.
So, for instance, when the mice were placed in cold temperatures, levels of TSK rose because their bodies were working to generate heat.
‘We think TSK is somehow dampening energy expenditure. When there is a rapid loss of energy, it puts a brake on metabolism,’ said senior study author Dr Jiandie Lin, a professor of cell and developmental biology at Michigan Medicine.
‘If we remove this brake, our prediction was the mice would have accelerated burning of calories. And that turned out to be the case.’
To test this theory, the team split the mice into two groups, one without TSK and a control group.
When the lab rodents temporarily went without food, those without the hormone lost much more weight than the control mice.
The mice without TSK also had higher body temperatures, which showed they were burning more energy.
Next, they fed both groups a high-fat diet. The control group of mice doubled its weight, while those without TSK only increased their weight by about 30 percent.
‘We saw substantial protection against obesity,’ said lead author Qiuyu Wang, a postdoctoral fellow in Dr Lin’s lab.
‘And it comes with better glucose levels, reduced lipids, reduced fatty liver – really the whole package is improved.’
For future research, the team plans on examining if there is an association between TSK and so-called brown fat, which burns energy, and therapies that will stop TSK from ‘braking’ the metabolism, such as a pill.
Obesity is a known risk factor for several chronic health conditions including type 2 diabetes, strokes, heart attack and even certain types of cancer.
Health officials say that addressing the obesity epidemic will not only lead to better health outcomes but also reduce medical costs.
In 2012, a study from Cornell University in New York found obesity accounts for about 21 percent of total US health care costs, approximately $190.2 billion per year.
Obesity continues to plague more than one-third of adults in the US, and experts have warned that that proportion will only grow as younger generations do.
Several studies have predicted that nearly 45 percent of the US adult population will be obese by 2030.