Molecule Cuts Off Fat's Food Supply

hords writes "New Scientist reports a magic bullet that destroys the blood vessels that feed fat tissue enables mice to lose a third of their body weight. They first screened millions of peptides and identified one that binds to a membrane protein found only in the blood vessels supplying white fat. Then they hooked this up to another peptide that triggers cell suicide or apoptosis. Mice that had grown obese on a high-calorie diet were given daily injections of the combined peptide they lost 30 percent of their body weight in four weeks, whereas control mice given the two peptides separately grew even fatter."

Comments

Unforseen side effects

[spineboy]

A 30% loss of total body fat in a month will probably result in some rather harsh/detrimental side effects. Can you imagine what will happen to the HUGE increase in cellular breakdown products from all the fat, triglycerides,proteins and nucleaic acids that are liberated? Gout, kidney damage, brain infarcts are just a few. The human body is probably not equipped to deal with massive cell apoptosis (cell death) on a level like this.

On the other hand, morbid obesity is probably the number one preventable health concern in America. I am doubtfull that this will ever be a useful drug (i.e. too many side effects, like DEATH), but if somehow it makes it's way onto the list of FDA approved drugs, this will have a MAJOR affect on the American lifestyle (even less exercising?). Whatever pharm company invents this will be filthy, filthy, filthy rich.

N.B. It usually takes about 10 years and close to a bilion dollars to go from a chemical/protein to an approved drug in America. Let's check back in a few years.

Re:Unforseen side effects

[Kris_J]

My instincts point to liver failure. No way it could process all those disolving fat cells.

Re:Doesn't obesity come with other symptoms though

[Sgt York]

Well, here we have some difficulty, and we start an offtopic rant. Sometimes, what we take as a symptom is, in fact, the illness (AFAWK). These are primary diseases. There are diseases which are a specific pathologic state associated with a particular etiology, and there are diseases which are sets associated pathologies, with no certain associated etiology.

Take asthma, for instance. There is a distinct set of pathologies associated with asthma, but there is no single etiology, nor is there a set of etiologies which acount fully for the disease state (i.e., two people exposed to the same conditions may or may not develop asthma, even apart from genetics). Type I diabetes is the same way. There is a set of symptoms (airway hyperresponsiveness for asthma, or low insulin for diabetes) with an unknown cause. As that we do not know the cause, we must treat only the symptoms. Oddly, with the primary diseases, controlling the symptoms makes the disease undectable.

If you treat all of the symptoms of a cold, the cold is still detectable as adenovirus in in lungs (Use Koch's postulates). If someone has cancer and it is forced into remission, there are still ways to detect the presence of an old cancer (exceptionally difficult sometimes, but possible).

Not so with things like asthma, diabetes and primary diseases. Unless the symptom reasserts itself, the syndrome/disease/etc is undectable. Keep in mind that total ablation of the symptoms is rarely possible. It is only a theorectical concept except in mild cases.

Back on topic, there are many known causes for obesity the most common of which are eating too much or sitting on your ass too much. Most commonly obesity is a result of a combination of the two. Therefore, it could be aruged that obesity is not a primary disease, because we know the cause. The opposing arguement is that because we do not understand the motivations which cause the self destructive behavior (which is regarded as a symptom), the disease is primary. That is, since we do not understand the cause of the "eating too much" symptom, we must call it a primary disease. I disagree, personally, because I do not see self-destructive behavior as a pathological state in Man. It may not be beneficial, but I don't think it's abnormal.

Obesity can however be described as a cyclical disease, in that the disease state causes worsening of the state after a certain point. It is these people that truly need help. They essentially dug a hole that is too deep for them to climb out of on their own. These are the people who need intervention.