Scientists to Fix 'Bad' Fat by Suppressing Peptide That Regulates Memory & Learning

Scientists hope to suppress a peptide to help lose weight. So what if it causes memory loss, inability to learn, turns you into a nervous wreck, and damages your heart and blood vessels? At least you'll die thin!

by Heidi Stevenson

4 May 2011

The more modern medicine tries to "fix" your body, the bigger the mess they make. The reason is often that they don't notice anything outside the little thing they're looking at. The latest example is a bunch of mad scientists at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine who think that suppressing a peptide will magically turn "bad" fat into "good" fat. The fact that the protein, called NPY, is also important in other functions, such as vasoconstriction, memory, anxiety, and learning...well, that doesn't seem to matter.

In their report in the journal Cell Metabolism, the authors described an experiment in which they suppressed the function of NPY in rat brains. The result was a reduction in food intake and a decrease in weight. Their fact composition had changed. White fat had been replaced with brown fat.

The scientists believe that's of particular interest, because they believe that brown fat is good and white fat is bad. Part of the aging process is the the replacement of brown fat with white fat, which is less active metabolically. It doesn't generate body heat or expend calories in the process.

That there might be a reason for this change, the scientists don't seem to care. But, they figure that, if they can suppress the NPY peptide in humans, then they will have a diet pill that will make people lose weight. Dr. Bi, one of the authors, stated:

If we could get the human body to turn bad fat into good fat that burns calories instead of storing them, we could add a serious new tool to tackle the obesity epidemic.

Note that NPY is a brain peptide. That means these scientists propose to cavalierly change brain chemistry to force the body to do something it doesn't want to do: turn white fat cells into brown fat cells. Aside from the fact that they're not even asking why the body makes white fat cells—and what forcing them to change might do, other than cause weight loss—they are ignoring all the other things that NPY does.

Neuropeptin Y is the most common peptide in the brain. It's involved with many functions, among them:

• Regulation of energy balance.
• Memory retention.
• Learning.
• Epilepsy. (Excess NPY leads to epilepsy.)
• Vasoconstriction.
• Anxiolysis (calming).
• Stress.

So, scientists are hoping to suppress a neuropeptide to help lose weight. So what if it causes memory loss, inability to learn, turns you into a nervous wreck, and damages your heart and blood vessels? At least you'll die thin!

These scientists are focused only on NPY's potential for weight loss! If they have any idea what other effects a drug they develop might have, they apparently don't care. It's obvious that their interest is in developing a chemical that can be sold for tons of money. If, in the end, people are harmed by it? Well...you can bet it won't be the scientists' bodies affected!

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