Obesity is considered as one of the biggest public health challenges of the century. Statistics show that it is affecting more than 500 million people worldwide. In the United States alone, obesity costs at least $200 billion each year. This medical condition also contributes to potentially fatal disorders such as cancer, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
The findings of a new research uncover a genetic circuit that the controls our body metabolism and whether to burn or store fat. The scientists have found that by manipulating that genetic circuit like a master switch it may offer a new approach for obesity treatments.
Researchers have finally understood how the gene tied to obesity makes people fat. This major discovery could open the door to new possibilities of weight management, beyond the traditional exercise and diet approach. Since the year 2007, scientists were dealing with a big mystery. They have known that the FTO gene is related to obesity but didn't know how.
The experiments done during the latest research reveal that energy from food could be stored as fat rather than burned due to a faulty version of the gene. Lab research in genetic modification of the FTO gene in mice and human cells suggest that the effects can be reversed. These findings give hope that soon a drug or treatment can be designed to reverse the obesity in affected people.
The discovery is important because it challenges the notion that people are affected by obesity because of their own wrong choices, not exercising enough and choosing to eat too much, according to the study leader Melina Claussnitzer, expert in genetics at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She added that genetics has revealed for the first time that the true mechanism in obesity was different from what was suspected before.
Many independent experts praised the discovery. For instance, Dr. Clifford Rosen, scientist at Maine Medical Center Research Institute, declared that the discovery is indeed a big deal, and it challenges the idea that the obesity epidemic is all about eating too much. It's clarified now that the fact our cells play an important role in how food gets used, he added. This discovery creates the pathway for "drugs that can make those fat cells work differently".
The research has been conducted by scientists at Harvard University and MIT and published online by the New EnglandJournal of Medicine on Wednesday, August 19.
