 New formula for fit future
Baby food offering lifetime protection against obesity could be in the supermarket soon, Lisa Melton reports |
 UK researchers are developing infant formula and other ‘child-friendly’
preparations that will provide permanent protection from obesity and diabetes
into adulthood, even in those individuals on high-fat diets.
The foods will be supplemented with leptin, which will help keep those who
take the new products early in life permanently slim. ‘Like those people
who are lean by nature even though they over-eat -- like we all do – they
will tend to be inefficient in terms of using energy,’ said Mike Cawthorne,
who heads the Metabolic Research team at the Clore Laboratory in the University
of Buckingham, UK.
The Buckingham team has already shown that giving rats leptin supplements early
in life offers permanent protection against obesity and diabetes in adulthood
(AM J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol, doi: 10.1152/ajpregu.00676.2006).
Even animals fed a high-fat diet remained slim.
Leptin is best known as the fat hormone that turns off hunger in the brain.
It is naturally produced throughout life. But leptin’s role in infancy
is slightly different: it hardwires the body’s energy balance settings.
In fact, the decision to be fat or thin may even be made before birth, during
pregnancy. Feeding the hormone to pregnant rodents has a lifelong impact on
their offspring’s predisposition to obesity. Animals born of leptin-treated
mothers remain lean even when fed a fat-laden diet, while those from untreated
rodents gained weight and developed diabetes.
The difference boils down to energy expenditure, Cawthorne has found. The offspring
of leptin-treated mothers burn up more energy. ‘The infants are permanently
inefficient in terms of using energy,’ said Cawthorne who envisages giving
leptin supplements to infants to protect them against future weight gain.
Leptin-enriched foodstuffs could soon be sitting in our shopping trolleys or
available at pharmacies, he said. Cawthorne is planning the development of infant
milks and other products. ‘The supplemented milks are simply adding back
something that was originally present: breast milk contains leptin and formula
feeds don’t,’ he said.
But previous experiments with leptin failed when treated individuals seemed
to resist its hunger-quenching effect. Cawthorne believes that, this time, the
physiological circumstances could be right. ‘You would only take this for
a short time, very early in life,’ he pointed out.
As worldwide obesity rates continue to escalate, a treatment that stops weight
gain could not come too soon. And it is not just humans that stand to gain.
‘One must also remember the pet market. Fat and diabetic cats and dogs
are a major problem today,’ Cawthorne added.
But Edinburgh researcher Jonathan Seckl said that although the science is very
promising, we will need to be patient. ‘We need to know whether leptin
is acting pre- and post-natally, figure out how it works, and dissect the possible
side-effects before this becomes a potential approach for humans. Nonetheless,
this is good science,’ he said. .
|
