Scientists Found A Way to Disable a Gene Responsible For Obesity: Worry About Getting Too Fat No More?
Scientists Found A Way to Disable a
Gene Responsible For Obesity: Worry About Getting Too Fat No More?
May 06, 2020 05:04 AM EDT
Researchers from the Washington
University School of Medicine in St. Louis have successfully disabled a gene in
specific mouse cells, preventing mice from becoming obese even after being fed
a high-fat diet.
Macrophages,
vital inflammatory cells which are responsible for detecting, engulfing and
destroying pathogens, were blocked by scientists. Since obesity is correlated
with chronic low-grade inflammation, the researchers tested if reducing
inflammation could help control weight gain and obesity.
The study was published on April 20, 2020, in The Journal of Clinical
Investigation.
According to Steven L. Teitelbaum, MD, the
principal investigator of the study and Wilma and Roswell Messing Professor of
Pathology & Immunology, their study has developed a proof of concept that
it is possible to regulate weight gain by modulating the activity of the
inflammatory cells.
He adds
that it might work in several ways, but their team believed that it might be
able to control obesity and its complications by managing inflammation better.
Calories in Mice
Research from
Touro College in New York suggests that obese individuals burn fewer calories
than those who aren't. The same is also accurate with mice.
However, according to Wei Zou, MD, PhD, a
co-author of the study and assistant professor of pathology and immunology,
they found that obese mice managed the same level of calorie-burning as mice
that were not obese.
This first happened after the team deleted the ASXL2 gene in the
macrophages of the obese mice. In the second set of experiments, they also got
the same result after injecting the mice with nanoparticles that meddle with
the gene's activity.
Regardless of being fed high-fat diets, the
treated mice burned 45% more calories than the obese mice with an active gene
in macrophages. Scientists aren't quite sure how it prevented obesity in mice.
Fatty Liver Disease
According to Teitelbaum, a large percentage of Americans
currently have fatty livers because their fat deposits cannot take up the fat
they consume, causing the fat to go somewhere else.
A newsletter from Harvard reports that fatty liver disease happens
when some of the fat molecules accumulate inside liver cells. The presence of
those fattened cells can then lead to inflammation in the liver and cause
damage to surrounding liver tissue. Scientists claim that the epidemics of
obesity and diabetes are accountable for the disease.
He added that despite the mice consuming diets
high in fat, they didn't get fatty livers. Teitelbaum believes that confining
the inflammatory effects of their macrophages allows them to burn more fat. In
return, this keeps the mice healthier and leaner.
Nidhi
Rohatgi, another co-author of the study, and an instructor in pathology,
explained that it appeared to have something to do with getting white fat cells
to behave like brown fat cells.
White fat cells store fat
that makes us obese while brown fat cells help to
burn stored fat. The study's approach is a long way from becoming a therapy,
but researchers believe that it has the potential to help obese people burn fat
at rates similar to proportions seen in lean people.
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