New Pill Could Switch On Fat Burning
US scientists have devised a drug that can switch on a gene to burn body fat, offering hope of an exercise pill. This exercise pill tricks cells into thinking they are undergoing serious exertion and so helps the body burn extra fat.
Mice given the drug burned off fat, even when they did not exercise, and were resistant to weight gain despite a high-fat diet.
The ultimate use would be to treat people at risk of obesity-related diseases like diabetes, rather than offer a “no-work six-pack” pill. This radical new potential treatment for obesity may allow fat people to use drugs to slim down rather than dieting or exercising. The drug, a synthetic form of fat, has only been tested on animals. It appears to work by flicking a master switch within cells that regulates the storage or burning of fat.
Ronald Evans, the researcher who created the drug, told the Experimental Biology conference in Washington DC over the weekend that such drugs could lead to new treatments for human metabolic syndrome. Sometimes called syndromeX, this consists of obesity and its consequences, such as high blood pressure, elevated levels of fat in the blood, heart disease, diabetes and resistance to insulin.
Dr Evans, of the Salk Institute, in San Diego, California, found the drug activated the same fat-burning process that occurs during exercise, increasing the amount of calories burnt with no apparent effort. This made the mice resistant to weight gain even on a high-fat diet. The drug mimics normal fat and chemically triggers a gene switch called PPAR-delta. Turning on this switch activates the same fat-burning process that occurs during exercise.
The potential of chemical metabolic engineering is extremely promising, particularly since we live in a society where too few people get an ideal amount of exercise.
Such a drug could reduce fatty tissue, lower amounts of fat circulating in the blood, cut blood glucose levels and reduce resistance to insulin, limiting the risks of heart disease and diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is linked to obesity, and experts believe up to half of all cases could be prevented through changes to diet and exercise.
There are already a range of anti-fat drugs on the market, but they are criticised by nutrition researchers, who point out that people who take such drugs may lose weight at first, but without appropriate lifestyle changes, inevitably pile it back on soon after.
UK expert Dr Fredrik Karpe, from the Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism, is hoping to start human testing of this drug in the near future.
Commenting on the work, he said: “There has never been a method to ‘medically’ switch on fat burning before.
“The finding that PPAR-delta co-ordinates this process, not only by switching on fat burning, but also to rebuild the muscle in a way making it more fit for fat burning, is of major interest, not least as a completely novel approach for the treatment of the metabolic derangements accompanying obesity.”
But he cautioned; “Although this might become an ‘exercise pill’, it is unlikely to provide all the other benefits of real physical exercise.”