Helping to lose weight and preventing the development of heart disease at the same time: this is the promise of a new treatment, currently in the clinical trial phase.
- According to the World Health Organization, 1.9 billion adults worldwide were overweight in 2016 and 650 million were classified as obese.
- In the United States, one in four deaths is due to heart disease
In France, more than 8 million adults are obese, i.e. 17% of the population according to the Ministry of Solidarity and Health. Obesity is a major risk factor for several pathologies such as heart and cardiovascular diseases or type 2 diabetes. Thus, doctors always recommend that these patients lose weight. Diets, physical activity, gastric band break: there are different methods to achieve this… And a team of researchers may have found a new one: an anti-obesity drug which would also act on heart disease by improving patients’ insulin resistance. Their work has been published in the journal Steroids.
“Obesity, a problem that affects many families around the world”
It is more precisely an inhibitor, that is to say a drug that blocks the action of a enzyme – called P450 8B1 – linked to obesity. “Growing up, I dreamed of helping my family members, who suffered from obesity, heart disease and other health problems, explains Francis Yoshimoto, one of the researchers. This dream is becoming a reality, as we have developed a small molecule that can be used to fight obesity, a problem that affects many families around the world.“.
Less restrictive treatment than sport
“Exercise adherence is quite low and the prevalence of obesity continues to rise,” underlines Eunhee Chung, one of the authors. This team therefore wanted to develop a less restrictive solution for people suffering from obesity. For this, they conducted their experiment on mice. They first observed that mice that lacked the P450 8B1 enzyme were resistant to weight gain and had greater glucose tolerance, even when fed a high-fat diet. Thus, they thought that blocking the action of P450 8B1 could be a solution for treating the metabolic disorders associated with obesity. They gave their anti-obesity drug to mice for seven days while continuing to feed them food high in fat and sugar. Result: the level of glucose in the blood of the rodents decreased and they did not gain weight.
Treat insulin resistance
The researchers concluded that their new drug could treat the insulin resistance associated with obesity. This can be defined as a situation where cells – liver, muscle and fat – are less sensitive to insulin. Thus, there are fewer glucose which enters these cells and this remains in the blood. In response, the cells of the pancreas over-produce insulin, which tires the organ, which becomes exhausted and eventually no longer produces enough insulin. As a result, the blood glucose level explodes because it is no longer regulated. “These results show how our research in synthetic chemistry can contribute significantly to the well-being of society by treating obesity and heart disease.“, concludes Francis Yoshimoto.
.
