All of us, at some point in our lives, have wished we could make body fat simply disappear, or at least transfer it from, say, the hips to the forearms.
As always, scientists, it seems, are on top of this problem, and have discovered a biological switch by which stress promotes obesity, the Washington Post has reported.
What this new discovery means is that help is finally at hand for the world's weight problem. We may yet get our wish after all, it seems.
The experiments, so far conducted on mice, have shown the neurochemical pathway which promotes fat in chronically stressed animals that take in the equivalent of the modern junk-food diet. If the signals that promote fat growth are blocked, fat accumulation is halted, fat deposits can be shrunk and by stimulating the pathway, voila!, could lead to removal of fat.
The research, published online by the journal Nature, was led by Zofia Zukowska of the Georgetown University's department of physiology and biophysics, who described the findings as 'very exciting.'
High stress levels and the easy availability of high-fat food, two factors that signal modern societies, explain increasing levels of obesity, particularly in Western countries, say researchers.
Zukowska's team believes that studies on humans are as close as two years away. Negotiations with drug companies to license the technology have already begun, as has the procedure for securing a patent.
What Zukowska's team did was quite basic, testing the old adage that chronic stress can cause people to put on weight. They subjected the mice to chronic stress conditions, like making them stand in cold water for an hour a day, or caging them with aggressive alpha-males for 10 minutes a day, and following it up with either a standard feed or one similar to our junk food.
What they found was that the mice that were subjected to both stress and junk food accumulated about twice as much fat in their bellies as the non-stressed ones that ate the same food.
'It's the combination of stress and high-fat, high-sugary diet, that is the humongous combo,' Zukowska was quoted as saying.
But worse was to follow. The obese mice were putting on the worst kind of fat, one that was laced with hormones and other illness-inducing chemical signals. And promptly, after three months the mice also showed the signs of many illnesses that fat human beings do: high blood pressure, early diabetes and high cholesterol.
The fat tissue in the animals, researchers found, contained high concentrations of neuropeptide Y (NPY) and its trigger, the neuropeptide Y2R receptor. The team next found that while humans with faulty NPY receptors are able to withstand obesity, those with excessive NPY are prone to becoming fat.
They also discovered that injecting a substance to block NPY not only stopped fat accumulation in the mice, despite the stress and high-fat diet, it also shrunk the fat deposits by 40 to 50 per cent in just two weeks. And, inserting NPY pellets under the skin of mice and three monkeys stimulated fat growth.
When fully developed, this technique could replace cosmetic and reconstructive surgical techniques now prevalent like liposuction.
While the studies have shown no adverse effects on the animals, other researchers warned of the potential for danger when replicated in human beings.
