Research study: Injections of a gut hormone that tells the brain the stomach is full resulted in significant weight loss in a small human test, a team of British researchers has found.
The study, reported in the current issue of the journal Diabetes, lasted a month and included 14 subjects. They lost an average of about five pounds, reported Dr Stephen R Bloom, an endocrinologist at Imperial College London.
Despite the short trial length, he said, the hormone, oxyntomodulin, is promising because it appears to lack the side effects seen in other anti-obesity drugs.
The most widely-used drug, Meridia, for example, affects brain chemistry and can produce not only mild side effects such as dry mouth and constipation, but more serious ones such as high blood pressure and an increased heart rate.
None of those effects were observed in the test of oxyntomodulin.
Dr Bloom said the hormone still needed to be tested in more patients and for longer periods. He said he also needed to find a way to circumvent the need to inject the hormone three times a day.
Dr Philip Barnett, an endocrinologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said the study showed "we're getting much closer to elucidating how hormones affect weight."
Oxyntomodulin is naturally produced in the human intestine and is released when the stomach becomes full.
Dr Barnett and others speculate that the hormone plays a role in other weight-loss procedures. For example, Bloom has previously found that oxyntomodulin levels in the blood are above normal in patients who have undergone gastric bypass surgery.
The need for a new approach to weight loss has never been greater.
Obesity and the ills associated with it, including heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure, have joined the World Health Organisation's list of the top 10 global health problems.
Oxyntomodulin is one of several hormones found to produce a feeling of fullness. Dr Bloom reported three years ago that a hormone known as PYY3-36 produced significant weight loss in rats by reducing appetite.
Short-term human safety trials of that hormone, administered as a nasal spray, have produced weight loss of 1.3 pounds in a week - about the same rate as oxyntomodulin.