Researchers may have found a new way to fight obesity, suggests a new study, which found that the stomach releases a molecule that appears to control food intake.
In studies conducted on rats, researchers have found that a specific type of lipid that travels directly from the stomach to the brain after a high-fat meal appears to suppress appetite.
A lipid is a type of fat that enters the bloodstream.
Levels of the lipid, known as N-acylphosphatidylethanolamine (NAPE), seem to increase after a meal before travelling to the part of the brain that controls both food intake and energy expenditure.
Researchers believe that NAPEs reduce activity in neurons that produce hunger signals while stimulating activity in neurons that suppress appetite.
The researchers also found that injecting extra amounts of NAPE into rats caused them to eat less and lose weight.
"Here, we gave rats NAPE for five days and saw a continuous reduction in food intake and a decline in body weight," Gerald Shulman, of the Yale University School of Medicine, said in a statement. "It suggests NAPE or long-acting NAPE analogs may treat obesity."
The findings are published in the journal Cell.
The study is encouraging for obesity researchers because it found that injecting NAPE into the rats' bloodstreams lowered their food consumption without making food unappealing to them.
The researchers also found a link between injecting NAPE directly into the rats' brains and a drop in calorie consumption.
The findings have yet to be replicated in humans, Shulman warned.
However, the study does have implications for obesity treatment, particularly after the team noticed that animals fed a high-fat diet for 35 days actually stopped producing elevated NAPE levels after eating a fatty meal.
This suggests that the suppression of NAPE may be involved in the development of diet-induced obesity in those who regularly consume high-fat foods.
The researchers will next attempt to replicate their findings in further animal studies before they move on to human trials.
