Obesity: Reviving the promise of leptin
Tuesday, January 6, 2009 - 13:49
in Health & Medicine
The discovery more than a decade ago of leptin, an appetite-suppressing hormone secreted by fat tissue, generated headlines and great hopes for an effective treatment for obesity. But hopes dimmed when it was found that obese people are unresponsive to leptin due to development of leptin resistance in the brain. Now, researchers at Children's Hospital Boston report the first agents demonstrated to sensitize the brain to leptin: oral drugs that are already FDA-approved and known to be safe. Findings were published January 7 by the journal Cell Metabolism.
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