Melbourne: Having trouble shedding those extra kilos? You may soon get an injection that could help you burn calories and melt the excess flab away.
A team by an Indian-origin researcher showed that they were able to turn white fat into brown fat in mice by blocking a natural chemical in their bodies.
The change led to weight loss, improved blood sugar levels and insulin tolerance in the rodents, the team reported in the journal Cell Metabolism.
"Considering that efforts to combat obesity with anti-obesity drugs have been frustrating, and that reducing obesity by dieting are often challenging in the long term, there is certainly a need for a new out-of-the-box approach," Sushil Rane, lead author of the National Institutes of Health study, was quoted as saying by the ABC News.
"Our findings have the potential to offer a new avenue, and our data suggests that the strategy is a rational
approach to combat obesity."
White fat is what scientists call the squishy stuff that most of us are trying to get rid of. It stores calories, but too much of it causes obesity and increases risk of type 2 diabetes, along with several other obesity-related diseases. But brown fat, which acts like muscle, contains iron and even burns calories within the cells. It is naturally lost as people age, and it cannot be gained by eating certain foods or performing certain exercises.
Dr Ken Fujioka, director of nutrition and metabolic research at Scripps Clinic in San Diego, said the findings could be "huge if you could apply it to humans", though that remains a big "if" at this point.
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