Marc Flemming
Renovator
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Registered: Jan 2003
Local time: 12:30 PM
Location: Santa Cruz
Posts: 3663
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A hormone produced by the intestines, called peptide YY3-36 (PYY), could help obese people lose weight, new research suggests.
"This is the first time that a hormone has been shown to cause a long-term reduction in calorie intake in obese volunteers," lead author Dr. Rachel Batterham, from Imperial College in London, said in a statement. "We now need to do studies over a longer period to see whether the decrease in appetite and food intake...translates into weight loss."
PYY has been shown to curb the appetites of normal weight individuals, but it was unclear if the hormone would also work for obese people. Leptin, a hormone that works in similar way as PYY, only seems to reduce food intake in normal weight individuals, not in obese people.
The new findings, which are reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, are based on a study of 12 obese and 12 lean subjects who were treated with injections of PYY or an inactive chemical.
Even before giving the injections, the authors noted that obese subjects had lower body levels of PYY compared with lean subjects. In addition, the lower the PYY level, the more obese the subject.
When both lean and obese subjects were offered a buffet lunch, they ate far fewer calories if they had first been given PYY rather than an inactive chemical. Moreover, PYY treatment was tied to a dramatic drop in the 24-hour calorie intake in both groups.
Further testing revealed that the PYY infusion produced a fall in plasma levels of ghrelin, a well-known appetite-stimulating hormone.
Despite the encouraging results, it is unlikely that treatment with PYY or any single drug "will provide a magic bullet to induce and maintain weight loss," Dr. Judith Korner and Dr. Rudolph L. Leibel, from Columbia University in New York, note in a related editorial.
"Successful pharmacologic treatment for obesity may be possible only by simultaneously targeting" all of the body systems that are involved in food intake, the editorialists state.
Source: New England Journal of Medicine
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09-04-2003 09:49 PM
