Leptin Hormone Could Be Key To Combat Obesity
There is new hope for Leptin, an appetite-suppressing hormone that failed weight-loss tests a decade ago. A new Leptin study may find a cure for obesity.
Leptin is a hormone that tells our brains when we’ve had enough to eat. There were great hopes for Leptin treatments in the mid-1990s as obese mice that lacked Leptin lost weight when given the hormone. But unfortunately it was discovered that most obese people develop a resistance to Leptin – their brains stopped responding to the hormone’s message to stop eating. In obese patients, it was found, the brain cells develop increased stress in the ER, which is a structure within the cells where proteins are assembled. This ER stress blocks Leptin acceptance in the brain.
However, researchers at Harvard Medical School may have found a way to circumvent that problem. The researchers found two drugs – PBA, which is a treatment for cystic fibrosis, and TUDCA, which is a liver-disease treatment, serve to reduce ER stress.
Researchers have been looking for a drug that would recreate Leptin sensitivity for years, but until now nothing has been successful. In studies done on mice, Leptin resistance was overcome with either PBA or TUDCA – sensitivity was increased tenfold, in fact – raising great hopes that the same combination of drugs will work in humans. The hope is that the combination will create, finally, a cure for obesity.
If the Leptin study finds a cure for obesity, it will ease an enormous burden on the nation’s already overtaxed health-care system. Obesity is a growing global epidemic, with nearly 2 billion people worldwide considered obese. In the United States, approximately two-thirds of people are overweight or obese. That’s a figure that has grown from 13% in 1962. According to the U.S. Surgeon General, obesity is responsible for more than 300,000 deaths each year.
Leptin was heralded as a miracle cure during initial studies. In 1995 Amgen Inc. paid $20 million for the commercial rights to the drug. In 2006 Amgen sold the rights to Amylin Pharmeceuticals.
Existing obesity drugs have only limited success, and many have side effects. The Leptin study may find a cure for obesity that is successful, and can help cure the growing obesity epidemic.
The next stage of testing is clinical tests on humans. The two drugs, PBA and TUDCA, are already FDA-approved and known to be safe for humans.
The findings of the most recent study showing that Leptin may find a cure for obesity were published January 7 in the journal Cell Metabolism.