It’s no secret that North America is getting fat.
The Centers for Disease Control estimates more than one third of Americans — or 78.6 million people — are obese. It’s not just adults who are overweight, either. The medical burden is vast; being overweight is a risk factor for heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and cancer.
— CDC (@CDCgov) October 30, 2014
The costs for treating obesity are astronomical: $147 billion per year in the United States. Because the problem is so huge, many approaches to solving the obesity epidemic are being explored, including pharmaceutical interventions.
Skinny Pill
For those who want to pop a pill to stay thin, new research published in the journal Nature Cell Biology is of interest. Scientists at Harvard University say they are on the way to developing a pill that could be a viable therapeutic option to prevent weight gain.
The research focuses on two different types of fat cells present in the body. The first type, by far the most common, are called white fat cells. These are present all over the body — especially in that stomach paunch — and are filled with lipids. Much rarer are brown fat cells. These are darker in color because they contain lots of mitochondria — cellular power plants that can turn lipids into energy. They burn fat very fast and efficiently.
White Into Brown
The scientists at Harvard have potentially found a way to convert the excess white fat cells in obese people into energy-hungry brown cells that can burn off a lot of lipids fast. By using a screening system involving thousands of compounds, the researchers discovered two particular molecules that turn off a particular protein. This de-activation coaxes developing fat cells to turn brown instead of white; it's also capable of turning white cells into brown cells.
— Paul Knoepfler (@pknoepfler) December 10, 2014
A Molecular Revolution
This research highlights the power of molecular screening processes to discover new pharmaceuticals. As recently as a decade ago, finding specific compounds that block the activity of proteins was left largely to chance. Now, with huge libraries of potential compounds and even greater amounts of computer power to match, scientists can winnow down the list of biologically active compounds in a flash.
Rx For Exercise
But the question still needs to be asked: why focus on drugs to reduce obesity when eating right and getting enough exercise may do the job just as well?
“There’s a long way to go,” Dr. Thomas Wolever, a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto, told Sputnik. “Every day someone makes a spectacular discovery in test tubes or animals which doesn’t pan out in people."
"At the moment, changing lifestyle is the best result we have.”
