DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – Some North Texas researchers believe they have found a way to control obesity by manipulating molecules in the heart.
Researchers at the
University
of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas have demonstrated, for
the first time, that the heart can regulate energy balance.
“We discovered a protein that’s expressed in the heart, it’s a
protein called MED 13, and it turns out that this protein regulates
metabolism in the whole body,” explained Dr. Eric Olson, chairman of
molecular biology at UT Southwestern.
Dr. Olson said researchers fed mice a high-fat diet, then ‘turned on’ the protein and were genuinely surprised.
“Of
course
we went back and said ‘wait a minute we better check this again’ and
have done it many times,” Olson said, “It was really unexpected. We
didn’t go into this looking for a way to treat obesity, it just was a
serendipitous observation.”
Of the test Dr. Olson said researchers learned, “We can make them
resistant to obesity,” but that wasn’t all,
“We can also treat many of
the other aspects of abnormal metabolism like the struggle to lower
cholesterol and improve glucose handling in these animals.”
Researchers said despite their high-fat diet the mice stayed lean as
long as the protein was ‘activated’. When the protein was removed the
mice become obese.
Olson said they’re now using the protein to develop an obesity drug
that might also be used to combat high cholesterol and Type 2 Diabetes.
But researchers say that drug is still a long way from even being tested
in humans. From
cbslocal:
Wait, what's that? "The drug is still a long way from even being tested on humans?" And why would that be? Because the government has to pay a bunch of bureauweenies to test it first. Oh whatever did we do before we had the FDA?
Anyway, luckily they test them thoroughly because, if they didn't, do you know what might happen? Yes, you'd see a commercial on tv every five minutes for some law firm trying to get you to join their lawsuit against a drug maker. And do you have any IDEA know how irritating that would be? Oh ... wait..
Never mind the increased cost you pay in inflated health care costs so these companies can afford the ever increasing medical malpractice insurance. I love how the lawyers extract money from you through your insurance and your health care provider. Keep voting for Democratics.