Leptin News and Research

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Leptin is a 16 kDa protein hormone that plays a key role in regulating energy intake and energy expenditure, including appetite and metabolism. It is one of the most important adipose derived hormones. The ''Ob(Lep)'' gene (Ob for obese, Lep for leptin) is located on chromosome 7 in humans.

Findings could lead to new therapeutic strategies for obesity

Peptides that target blood vessels in fat and cause them to go into programmed cell death (termed apoptosis) could become a model for future weight-loss therapies, say University of Cincinnati (UC) researchers.

2 Feb 2010

Universite de Montreal researchers are developing leptin-based pill to control hunger

A Universit- de Montr-al research team is developing a pill composed of leptin, the protein that tells our brain to stop eating. "Mice deprived of leptin will not stop eating. They become so big they have trouble moving around," says Mo-se Bendayan, a pathology professor at the Universit- de Montr-al Faculty of Medicine who has studied the leptin protein extensively.

27 Jan 2010

New issue from Annals of Internal Medicine

Prescriptions of some opioids, such as oxycodone, have increased significantly over the past decade. As long-term opioid therapy for chronic noncancer pain becomes more common, the deaths associated with opioids increase.

19 Jan 2010

Researchers devise method to pinpoint key genetic variations under positive natural selection that may impact human health

Fossils may provide tantalizing clues to human history but they also lack some vital information, such as revealing which pieces of human DNA have been favored by evolution because they confer beneficial traits - resistance to infection or the ability to digest milk, for example. These signs can only be revealed through genetic studies of modern humans and other related species, though the task has proven difficult.

8 Jan 2010

Book on physiology of eating and weight regulation

The development of effective preventive and therapeutic measures to control eating and body weight involves basic physiology as well as cognitive and social psychology.

21 Dec 2009

People with higher Leptin levels have significantly reduced incidence of AD and dementia

This week’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (Dec 16) features a report on a long-term, prospective study of elderly, dementia-free individuals led by researchers from Boston University School of Medicine and the Framingham Heart Study focusing on the association between the protein hormone Leptin and the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

17 Dec 2009

Higher leptin levels associated with lower incidence of AD and dementia

Persons with higher levels of leptin, a protein hormone produced by fat cells and involved in the regulation of appetite, may have an associated reduced incidence of Alzheimer disease and dementia, according to a study in the December 16 issue of JAMA.

16 Dec 2009

Tarenflurbil drug does not appear to benefit Alzheimer’s patients

Although there were promising results in a phase 2 trial, patients with mild Alzheimer disease who received the drug tarenflurbil as part of a phase 3 trial did not have better outcomes on measures of cognitive decline or loss of activities of daily living compared to patients who received placebo, according to a study in the December 16 issue of JAMA.

15 Dec 2009

Scientists present new research on adipocyte regulation

The ninth Colloque Médecine et Recherche of la Fondation Ipsen devoted to Endocrinology, held in Paris on December 4, 2009, has reviewed the recent progress in understanding the regulation of fat storage in the body and the consequences of the breakdown of this regulation.

14 Dec 2009

Amylin Pharmaceuticals to present new data from its obesity program at Obesity 2009

Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. today announced that new data from its obesity program will be presented at Obesity 2009, the 27th Annual Scientific Meeting of The Obesity Society, to be held in Washington, D.C. October 24-28. Phase 2 data from the pramlintide/metreleptin combination treatment clinical program will be the subject of a late-breaking oral presentation.

20 Oct 2009

Leptin can determine osteoarthritis in obese patients

The link between obesity and osteoarthritis may be more than just the wear and tear on the skeleton caused by added weight.

29 Sep 2009

Obesity due to leptin deficiency plays major role in knee osteoarthritis

In 2005 the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that globally 400 million adults were obese, defined by a body mass index (BMI) of 30 kg/m2 or greater. WHO projects that by 2015 there will be more than 700 million obese adults worldwide. Obesity is considered to be one of the greatest risk factors for osteoarthritis, a progressive musculoskeletal disorder that is characterized by loss of joint cartilage.

29 Sep 2009

Researchers study functional similarity between zebrafish and humans to fight infections

Since the human response to infection is highly complex, research to understand how people fight infection is facilitated by studying how similar processes occur in simpler organisms. Zebrafish are becoming an important model for human disease, since they are easily handled, maintained and manipulated and many fundamental processes between zebrafish and humans are conserved.

24 Sep 2009

Hormone leptin can regulate bone mass and suppress appetite

Contrary to the prevailing view, the hormone leptin, which is critical for normal food intake and metabolism, appears to regulate bone mass and suppress appetite by acting mainly through serotonin pathways in the brain, according to a recent study published in Cell by Yale School of Medicine researchers and colleagues at Columbia University. This new finding contradicts the view that leptin acts primarily in the hypothalamus.

24 Sep 2009

New therapies boost obesity drug market

Decision Resources, one of the world's leading research and advisory firms for pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, finds that the uptake of novel therapies will drive the obesity drug market to increase more than six-fold, from $512 million in 2008 to more than $3.2 billion in 2018 in the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and Japan.

16 Sep 2009

High-fat foods can induce binge eating

Findings from a new UT Southwestern Medical Center study suggest that fat from certain foods we eat makes its way to the brain. Once there, the fat molecules cause the brain to send messages to the body's cells, warning them to ignore the appetite-suppressing signals from leptin and insulin, hormones involved in weight regulation.

14 Sep 2009

Acceleron's Phase 1 trial of ACE-031 reveals its potential in treating neuromuscular diseases

Acceleron Pharma, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company developing novel therapeutics that modulate the growth of cells and tissues including red blood cells, bone, and muscle, today announced preliminary results from the ACE-031 Phase 1 single dose clinical trial demonstrating that ACE-031 increased lean body mass and muscle volume. The results from this randomized, placebo-controlled study were presented at the 14th International Congress of the World Muscle Society in Geneva, Switzerland.

10 Sep 2009

Scientists shed light on the relationship between hypertension and obesity

Some of the first information about how fat causes hypertension have been identified by researchers who say the findings should one day help identify which obese people - and maybe some thin ones too - are at risk for hypertension and which drugs would work best for them.

2 Sep 2009

Fruit flies' fat-store levels can be measured and controlled by brain neuron manipulation

A team of scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have pinpointed two groups of neurons in fruit fly brains that have the ability to sense and manipulate the fly's fat stores in much the same way as do neurons in the mammalian brain.

19 Aug 2009

Obesity leads to worse prostate cancer in both black and whites equally

A new look at a large database of prostate cancer patients shows that obesity plays no favorites when it comes to increasing the risk of recurrence after surgery: Being way overweight is equally bad for blacks and whites, say researchers at Duke University Medical Center.

13 Aug 2009