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Overeating makes brain go haywire: study
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-10-03 18:59

When they fed mice a high-fat diet, it became extremely active. And when it was active, the body ignored signals from leptin, a hormone that normally helps regulate appetite, and insulin, which helps convert food into energy.

Stimulating IKKbeta/NK-kappaB made the mice eat more, while suppressing it made them eat less.

Cai believes his team has discovered a master switch for the diseases caused by overeating.

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"Hypothalamic IKKb/NF-kB could underlie the entire family of modern diseases induced by overnutrition and obesity," his team wrote.

Cai does not know why this compound would be in the brain and in the immune system but suspects it evolved long ago in primitive animals that do not have the same sophisticated immune system as modern animals, including mice and humans.

"Presumably it played some role to guide the immune defense," Cai said in a telephone interview. "In today's society, this pathway is mobilized by a different environmental challenge -- overnutrition."

"Knocking out" the gene using genetic engineering kept mice eating normally and prevented obesity. This cannot be done in people but Cai believes a drug, or even gene therapy, might work.

With gene therapy, a virus or other so-called vector is used to carry corrective DNA into the body, but the approach is still highly experimental.

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