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Banned Weight-loss Drug Could Combat Liver Disease, Diabetes
sciencehabit writes: A drug the U.S. government once branded "extremely dangerous and not fit for human consumption" deserves a second chance, a study of rats suggests. Researchers report (abstract) that a slow-release version of the compound reverses diabetes and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), an untreatable condition that can lead to cirrhosis and liver cancer.
Title and summary didn't name the subject of the article, adding here.
The drug is dinitrophenol. From the medical texts:
DNP is an ATP inhibitor, which means it prevents cell mitochondria from synthesising ATP from simple sugars. Taken in excess, DNP can cause cell death by starvation and organism death by hyperthermia (it causes an imbalance in the proton gradient which results in the release of large amounts of heat). The good: you'll be thin. The bad: you'll be dead. But at least you won't be cold.
Industrial uses include a precursor to sulphur dyes, and a component in liquid and plastic explosives. The US FDA and the UK's Food Standards Agency have both condemned DNP as a dangerous industrial chemical that should not be taken internally. Doses as low as 20mg/kg (in humans) are shown to be lethal (http://dx.doi.org/10.1081%2Fclt-200058946).
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