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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."
Only 1 comment so far? Oh right, like this story isn't of concern to most of us here.
"Derp de derp."
...in five years after the entire world is hooked on it, we'll see, "Have you been taking MOLECULE DIET PILLS and started bleeding UNCONTROLABLY? If so, YOU could get up to $1,000,000 in damages! Call 1-800-NO-BLEED!" commercials.
Sure this might reduce fat cells and overall body weight, but does it do anything to control cholesterol levels, blood pressure, etc?
Giving this to patients by itself wouldn't do much to discourage healthy eating. You'd have to combine it with treatment for cholesterol (and other obesity symptoms). Of course, then people could get a dependancy on it, meaning healthy eating and exercise become pointless to them.
Just some food for thought (h0h0h0, its puntastic)
I swear, if I see another Slashdot comment with "It will be interesting to see"...
I see all sorts of potential problems here. But here are two.
1. We don't know what else fat cells do in your body. They may have other roles than fat storage.
2. The health risk associated with obesity is not necessarily causative, just correlated. It has a lot to do with being sedentary. A fat person who takes these pills and becomes thin probably doesn't alter their health status much unless they take the opportunity to be less sedentary as well.
I bet the potential for abuse for cosmetic purposes, a la anabolic steroids, will be huge.
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.
..........FULL STOP.
The genomes of rats, mice and humans have a lot of key differences in the basic metabolic pathways. That recent study explains a lot about why rat and mouse studies can be so wrong about human responses to drugs and things.
What's my brain made out of? Oh yeah, Fat. Let's mess with that, shall we?
http://radio.weblogs.com/0103443/
The article said the drug only targets white fat. Virtually all of the "important fat" in your body (eg: membranes around the heart, blood vessels, brain, myelin, etc) is "brown fat". White fat (actually yellow), on the other hand, is the stuff that you find in love handles, beer bellies, fat-asses, and our other beloved yet misshapen body parts. The big difference between to two in your bodies eye is that white fat is for storage, whereas brown fat is for other things like protection and temperature regulation. Brown fat tissue doesn't really get "fat" (you'd be dead if it did) because thats not it's purpose.
:)
So as long as this drug really only does affect white fat, it should (theoretically) work. It certainly wouldn't be a miricle drug though. For one thing, it seems like it would attack fat indiscriminately. Your body stores fat in preferred locations, but theres no way to tell the drug to "just" go after your gut. It would eat fat away from your entire body - not just your problem areas. Imagine how many women would bitch after their boobs shrunk, their arm muscles were exposed, but their ass was still too big?
The other major problem with it is that it wouldn't be permanent. Fat cells don't have a specified size - they'll grow or shrink depending on the bodies need. So even if you kill off half your fat cells one week, theres no guarantee that next week your remaining fat cells will just start growing 2 times bigger (this is why lyposuction 'doesn't always work'). This means the drug probably wouldn't work for your "typical fat American kid", because their diets won't change. Sure, they could slice off a few pounds with a pill, but if they keep eating unhealthy their bodies will just pile more into their existing cells. If they go on the drugs repeatedly (or permanently), they could wind up with serious health problems - or worse.
The best audience for this type of thing would be people who eat healthy, but for whatever reason can't loose fat, or want to loose more of it. People like bodybuilders (for that even more ripped look), or possibly women who haven't lost pregnancy fat after birth, or something. For the majority of us who snack on chocolate cake and pop between our 6 course meals, it probably wouldn't work.
Sorry to ruin everyones day
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.
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.