How ‘skinny hormone’ jab may end obesity in 10 years
INJECTING overweight people with hormones replicating those in thin people could end obesity within ten years, researchers say.
The ‘triple jab’ mimics gastric bypass surgery by tricking subjects into feeling full – and initial tests show it reduced hunger by a third.
While the surgery is an effective method of weight loss, it is expensive and carries a one-in-200 risk of death.
Obese people have lower levels of hormones telling the brain to stop eating – typically found in slimmer people and those with stomach infections leading to a loss of appetite.
But Sir Steve Bloom, Professor of Medicine at Imperial College, London, reports in BBC2’s Horizon tonight: ‘Fast forward ten years, obesity won’t be a problem. They’ll have the injections, they will be painless, no side-effects and actually really inexpensive and freely available so I think this is going to make an enormous difference.’
In tests, two obese men injected with the hormones were given an huge bowl containing three supermarket chicken curry ready meals. They each ate around 280 fewer calories than after a placebo jab.
The two men told Horizon that they felt ‘not hungry at all’ and ‘comfortably full’. Sir Steve’s fellow researcher Patricia Tan said: ‘With the injections of the hormones, the patients are eating up to 30 per cent less.’ So far, the three hormones OXM, PYY and GLP1, have been administered with a jab before each meal, but the scientists hope to develop an injection lasting a week. Sir Steve told the Daily Mail: ‘The hormones are telling the brain to switch off the supply of food.’
Meanwhile US experts from the Alpert School of Medicine are investigating the effects of transplanting gut bacteria on weight. It comes after a slim patient treated for a stomach infection was injected with gut bacteria from her overweight but otherwise healthy daughter – a standard treatment. She gained more than four stone in around two years.
Good Health – Page 45