COPENHAGEN: Good news for calorie conscious and weight-watching people. Now you can have large portions of pizzas and burgers, without worrying about the pounds it will add to your waistline! Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have managed to inhibit the body’s ability to store fat.
They genetically deleted an enzyme called NAMPT from the fat tissue of mice, rendering the animal completely resistant to becoming overweight or obese, even on a very fatty diet.
”We gave the mice a diet that more or less corresponds to continuously eating burgers and pizza. Still, it was impossible for them to expand their fat tissue,” said Karen N?rgaard Nielsen, first author on the publication and a PhD student at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research.
”Our ultimate goal is that by understanding these fundamental underpinnings of how we become obese, we can apply our finding to the development of novel treatment strategies for metabolic disease,” Mr Nielsen told the Science Daily.
The findings are in line with results obtained from humans. Several studies have shown that the presence of large amounts of enzyme NAMPT in blood and in stomach fat tissue is significantly connected with being overweight or obese.
However, this study provides the first evidence that NAMPT is absolutely required to become overweight or obese and that lack of NAMPT in fat tissue fully protects against obesity.
In the University of Copenhagen study, the researchers compared how normal mice and mice lacking NAMPT in fat tissue gained weight when given either high-fat food or a healthier, lower-fat diet. When on the healthy diet, there was no difference in body weight or the amount of fat between the normal mice and the mice lacking NAMPT.
However, when the mice were given high-fat food, the control mice became very obese, yet the mice lacking NAMPT gained no more weight from high-fat food than when they were on the healthier diet. In addition, the mice lacking NAMPT maintained better control of blood glucose than normal mice when eating high-fat food.
”NAMPT is critical for fat tissue function. Unfortunately, that function is efficiently storing fat. NAMPT in fat tissue was likely once an extraordinary benefit to our ancestors but in today’s society full of high-fat, calorically-dense foods, it may now pose a liability,” said Associate Professor Zachary Gerhart-Hines from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research and corresponding author on the study. (agencies)
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