Obesity is a growing concern in the United States, with it affecting about 40 percent of adults and 20 percent of children. Though there are many new therapies to tackle obesity, there is still so much that researchers do not understand about the brain-body connection that regulates appetite. Of late blockbuster weight loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy have become a household name. The makers of Ozempic, Novo Nordisk have recently revealed that it developed a compound that might work even better than Ozempic. This compound has shown significant results in mice.
Weightloss drugs including Ozempic promote weight loss by mimicking the hormone called GLP-1, which makes you feel full after eating. The new therapy adds another hormone leptin to the mix. Produced by adipose tissue (body fat), leptin plays a key role in maintaining normal weight for the long term by signaling the brain to stop eating once enough energy is stored.
“Leptin augments weight loss when used in combination with other weight loss agents, including [GLP-1 drugs],” the researchers from the Novo Nordisk team and the University of Michigan wrote in a paper published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
“This observation suggests that using leptin as part of combinatorial therapies represents a potential approach to the more efficacious treatment of obesity,” they added.
In order to develop an injection, that can be administered daily, the researchers studied the neurons in mice brains that respond to GLP-1 and leptin signals. They also identified similar neurons in rhesus monkeys, which hints at its possible potential in humans later on. The researchers also stated they haven’t found out if humans have similar neurons that can be targeted to reduce food intake and body weight. Though this method isn’t ready for people yet, the study shows that combining these hormones has the potential for future obesity treatments.
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The researchers said that the aim of the study is not to determine whether it is viable for humans, but rather to prove that this kind of molecule can induce weight loss in mice, where leptin by itself does not. The study’s goal is also intended to prove that both the leptin and GLP-1 parts of the molecule are essential for weight loss.
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