China: a solution for the obese who are always hungry, and it may come from a medical discovery
In China, or rather Hong Kong, they may have found the solution for many obese people: that of solving the problem of often being hungry. In fact, medical researchers have identified a mechanism that could unlock obesity treatment by making overweight people feel full.
Led by a team from Hong Kong Baptist University, they discovered an enzyme that plays an important role in the appetite sedation process and said targeted drugs could be developed to manage obesity.
The results, published in the journal Nature Metabolism , state that lipid cells send an enzymatic signal when they die, emitting energy, which on the one hand prepares the other cells for metabolism, but also generates the desire to replace them, hence hunger. . An antagonist to this enzyme would allow to eliminate the hunger that often affects obese people when trying to lose weight, a significant step forward. Scientists led by Dr Xavier Wong Hoi-leong and Professor Bian Zhaoxiang have identified the enzyme that can regulate satiety signals in the brain to help regulate food intake, called membrane matrix metalloproteinase type 1 ( MT1-MMP).
Wong said the research findings have established the role of MT1-MMP in regulating satiety and have indicated that it is a promising target for the treatment of obesity. The use of drugs to inhibit MT1-MMP could be a valid strategy for developing effective treatments.
If this has significant implications for China, it has caught up with the US in obesity rates. More than half a billion people in China are overweight, 50% of the population, of which 16.4% are obese. The rates are similar to those in Hong Kong, and the number of overweight or obese children between the ages of nine and 13 rose from 7% to 24% during the coronavirus pandemic. The myth of the slim and lean Chinese is over.
Being overweight puts people at greater risk for life-threatening diseases such as cardiovascular, diabetes and cancer. According to the 2015 Hong Kong Department of Health Population Health Survey, around 30% of Hong Kong people aged 15 to 84 were obese and another 20% were overweight.
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The article China: a solution for the obese who are always hungry, and may come from a medical discovery comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/cina-una-soluzione-per-gli-obesi-che-hanno-sempre-fame-e-puo-venire-da-una-scoperta-medica/ on Sun, 17 Jul 2022 08:40:16 +0000.