A new substance found in the gut may hold the key towards developing a new approach on obesity, a new scientific study, published Wednesday, in the journal Cell, shows. The fat-derived chemical messenger, dubbed NAPE, tells the brain when the food intake is sufficient, and also acts on the neurons that stimulate appetite.
 

Basically, when people have had enough to eat, their guts produce larger amounts of NAPE, which then travels to the brain and orders a complete shut-down of all food intake-related activities. Appetite decreases and a sensation of satiety occurs. The substance travels via blood stream, after a production "cap" is reached in the intestine. It starts building up as soon as people start eating, and reaches a critical level when enough food is ingested, at which point it spills into the blood.
 

In their research on unsuspecting lab mice and rats, scientists, led by Gerald Shulman from Yale University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, injected large NAPE amounts into the blood streams of the animals, and watched their reactions. Almost instantly, all hunger sensations disappeared, and mice that had been starved for 1-2 days didn't even touch their food.
 

Brain scans revealed that the substance focused in the hypothalamus, a portion of the brain that has been for quite some time now associated with hunger control. Smaller dosages, administered directly to the brain of the animal models, had the same effect as the larger ones, given in the belly. A 5 day-long therapy with extra NAPE made the mice and rats lose most of their appetite, and their weight dropped considerably.
 

Knowing that the substance is also present in the human gut, the researchers are now trying to determine whether it has the same effects on us too, seeing how the latest studies on hormones have failed. NAPE therapies could become a reality in the near-future, as researchers are desperately trying to counteract the ever-increasing number of obesity cases, prompted mainly by highly fatty food consumption and less physical exercises worldwide.