Obesity: could we ‘sweat out’ fat? In immune system experiment, obese mice lose 40pc of their weight in a month despite eating more
- Within four weeks of researchers triggering an immune response in mice they had shed 40 per cent of their body weight through their skin, all in the form of fat
- Researchers are poised to explore the concept in people, to better treat the consequences of obesity such as type 2 diabetes
In search of better treatments for type 2 diabetes and other consequences of obesity, Taku Kambayashi has long wondered if he could harness a bodily function that most think about in a different context: the immune system.
There was evidence to suggest this might work, as certain types of immune cells were known to play a role in metabolism. But when he and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States stimulated these cells in experiments on obese mice, they got a surprise.
Not only did the animals become healthier in terms of their blood-glucose levels and other metabolic “markers”, they also lost dramatic amounts of weight.
Within four weeks of triggering the animals’ immune response, Kambayashi and graduate student Ruth Choa found the mice had on average lost 40 per cent of their body weight – all in the form of fat.
What’s more, careful measurements revealed that the animals’ weight loss was not the result of burning calories any faster or eating less food. They actually were eating even more than before.