Now, overweight obese people can reduce their weight by just chewing chewing gums! These chewing gums will help them to reduce their weight by 25%.
Prof. Steve Bloom, of Imperial College, London, is leading a work on the new treatment based on a hormone produced by the body called pancreatic polypeptide (PP). This appetite-suppressing hormone can be used in chewing gum or injection to emulate the body’s natural signals for feeling full. The PP products will be free of side effects because it already circulates in the body. The body produces the hormone after every meal to ensure eating does not run out of control. There is evidence that some people have more of the hormone than others, and becoming overweight reduces the levels produced.
Prof. Bloom tested the hormone in 35 overweight volunteers who were otherwise healthy. The effect was statistically significant, reducing the amount of food eaten by 15% to 25%.
Pancreatic polypeptide are crucial to the control of mammalian energy balance. We use multiple techniques, from targeted adult gene manipulation through hypothalamic explants to human infusion studies, to demonstrate the workings of the hypothalamic circuits regulating appetite and energy expenditure. We have discovered the important role of peripheral peptide hormonal signals, for example from the gut, in regulating appetite. This is being exploited to identify the cause of excessive (or deficient) fat stores in man. These gut hormones are being used to develop powerful new ways of regulating appetite. They have the advantage that they appear safe for long term therapy. With over 1,000 people dying prematurely from obesity in the UK each week, and no effective treatment, such original approaches are long overdue and spur on our work.
Prof. Bloom has been awarded ?2.3m by the Wellcome Trust to develop his idea, one of the first awards made in the charity’s ?91m Seeding Drug Discovery Initiative.