The technical director, Jose Luis Mesa, of Vitagenes (situated in the Technological Park of Health Sciences (PTS)), collaborated in this project in conjunction with other distinguished scientists of the University to Melbourne and the Baker Heart Research Institute (Australia). Jose Luis Mesa was among the main authors of this study. The most pertinent result of the project that corroborated the statement ‘a potential treatment to prevent diabetes and obesity’ found a place for itself in the international scientific journal of Endocrinology.

The misconceived molecule

The amazing aspect about this study is that, erstwhile the evidence showed that the molecule Interleukin-6 that was chronically high in diabetic and obese people was considered a threat to diabetes and obesity, but this study negated that evidence completely.

In the words of Jose Luis Mesa, "No study had tried to inject interleukin-6 directly to analyse if this molecule was really harmful or, to the contrary, could help to prevent obesity and diabetes". He further states, “our hypothesis was that interleukin-6 was naturally high in diabetic and obese persons precisely to combat such diseases. In order to prove it, we injected human recombinant interleukin-6 daily for two weeks and analysed its behaviour and its effects on the metabolism".

The statement of Mark Febbraio, scientific director in the Baker Heart Research Institute and a member of the Advisory Scientific Committee of Vitagenes, further confirms the validity of this study. He stated, “…we obtained surprising results. The exogenous administration of interleukin-6 improved insulin sensitivity and the absorption of glucose, essential for diabetics".

In connection with obesity, Jose Luis Mesa points out that “interleukin-6 also increased the expression of important genes related to fats metabolism, such as PPAR and UCP2. This suggests that interleukin-6 could be involved in the metabolic control of body weight".

Vitagenes, though managed to find a better use of the molecule Interleukin-6, still maintain that this is a preliminary study conducted in animal models and that further studies are required to be conducted in humans to establish definite conclusions.

Mulchand Patel, senior author of the study who is also Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Buffalo said “Our earlier studies looked at newborn rats of the obese mothers in the post-weaning period, so we didn’t know how early this programming occurred," and added "Now we know it occurs in utero and specifically in the hypothalamus.” The professor opines that while the current studies were conducted on the rats, there is no reason to think that the system would be different in humans.

Metabolic programming is being studied from earlier times to observe the affect of a mother being malnourished during pregnancy on the offspring. The studies conclusively point out to long term affect of the malnutrition on babies starting from being underweight at birth to increased probability of attracting chronic diseases during adulthood. 

This study points to one very important fact that the women should aim to maintain optimal conditions during their pregnancies. According to one of the studies conducted in 2003, one third of the pregnant ladies in US showed the tendency to become over weight and obese. This of course is something which is not good for the offspring in the long run.

"Our findings that malprogramming effects induced during fetal development in the altered intrauterine environment in obese mother rats predispose the offspring for adult-onset obesity underscore the importance of women maintaining optimal conditions during their pregnancies," Patel noted.

The researchers at University of Buffalo studied the affect of reduction in TV viewing time on the BMI of the Kids over a 2 year period. The parents, with the help of a device, managed to reduce the time of their children in front of TV on an average by about 17.5 Hrs every week. The BMI of such kids showed significant downward changes. On the other hand the BMI changes were not significant among the kids whose TV viewing time came down by only about 5 Hrs every week.

Leonard Epstein, a Distinguished Professor with University and the first author of the said study said "Our controlled experiment provided a test of whether reducing access to television and computer time led to a reduction in BMI,". He further added "Results showed that watching television and playing computer games can lead to obesity by reducing the amount of time that children are physically active, or by increasing the amount of food they consume as they as engaged in these sedentary behaviors."

Since the researchers collated data on the kids every six months it was observed that there were significant changes in the BMI in the first and second noting. The overall results for the study period however showed only a modest change in the BMI. Professor Epstein was of the view that though the overall results of the study were not significant the magnified usage of device across US may provide huge reduction in the overall obesity and weight related medical issues.

The study papers are presented in the latest issue of Cell Metabolism by the lead author Johan Auwerx, MD a professor at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.

Earlier studies have revealed that the occurrence of aging effects can be slowed down while developing endurance capabilities, if the caloric consumption is reduced by about 20%. It also helped in providing adequate protection against diet-induced obesity and related problems like diabetes etc. Some earlier studies also successfully demonstrated the ability of Resveratrol to give similar metabolic benefits if consumed in large doses. The researchers in the present study focused on the activation of enzyme SIRT1, which they believed, was responsible for managing the population and efficiency of mitochondria, the energy boosters in our cells.

The present research concentrated on finding the role of activated SIRT1 enzyme in controlling diet-induced obesity. SIRT1 also promoted utilization of fat in liver, skeletal muscles and brown adipose tissue and thus effectively curb the negative impacts of fat-rich diet on metabolism.

Johan Auwerx said "These results show that new synthetic SIRT1 activators can reproduce the positive metabolic effects that were previously demonstrated using resveratrol, a naturally occurring SIRT1 activator found in red wine. But unlike resveratrol, these new chemical entities target only the SIRT1 pathway, making them more selective and potent for achieving these metabolic benefits."

There is a huge interest in the people to check the occurrence of obesity and other metabolic disorders though the use of SIRT1 due to ineffectiveness of diet management plans and physical exercises.

In one of the studies published in the European Heart Journal, researchers studies more than 1600 patients who underwent angioplasty. Such patients are usually given stents (a mental device placed permanently inside an artery during angioplasty) after a type of heart attack known as unstable angina or non-ST segment elevation. Surprisingly the findings showed that the obese and excessively obese patients were almost at the same level of risk of dying within a span of three years after the attack as people with normal weight.

One of the convincing explanation for this could be that obese people are more have their medical check-ups done at regular intervals and are able to have any heart related problems detected earlier and have treatments accordingly, which help them recover from heart attacks. Besides, it is observed that Heart attack patients who are obese are generally younger. Thus any change in the body that occur with obesity gets noticed and helps in detecting further problems, the study said.

The second study was conducted at a meeting of the American Society of Echocardiography. Here the researchers reported that weight gain is associated with a thickening of muscle in the left ventricle - that part of the heart, which acts as a pump. So if this aspect is detected early, then the problem of obesity can also be handled effectively. Thus the co-relation of obesity and heart attack is not necessarily a negative one - it can rather help patients get timely remedy and keep off their physical problems.

Factors analyzed for risk of breast cancer included fat being a significant contributor to it, though the studies on fat distribution are quite uncertain.

Earlier studies conducted for examining the relationship between body size and breast cancer revealed that taller women were at risk irrespective of weather or not they have reached the menopause stage. The study also suggested that obesity contributed to increased breast cancer risk in postmenopausal women and not in premenopausal women. This study however did not present the result on abdominal fat unambiguously.

Results revealed that body size mattered most in contributing to breast cancer in women at their postmenopausal stage rather than premenopausal. Height is also linked to breast cancer in both the groups, but predominantly in postmenopausal women.

No strong reasons could be attributed to understanding this phenomenon. However, some explanation is found in analyzing factors such as birth weight, diet, infection, energy balance, and insulin-related that influence bone growth as well as breast cancer.

Considering the fat distribution, hip circumference was a strong indicator of breast cancer risk in postmenopausal women who were not using HRT. But waist circumference controlled for overall body fat (BMI) did not show any indication of breast cancer risk in either post or premenopausal women.

The authors final conclusion on this is "Overweight is one of the few modifiable breast cancer risk factors and thus an important measure for breast cancer prevention and prognosis."

"This is a clear proof of principle that the human version of this device may be an effective treatment for obesity and diabetes. The clinical device would be placed endoscopically, making it far less invasive than surgical therapies," says the lead investigator, Lee Kaplan, MD, PhD, director. "The next step will be to complete large-scale controlled trials of this procedure in human patients. We also need to learn more about how this device affects the complex interplay between receptors that line the stomach and intestine which are stimulated by ingested food and the brain, pancreas, liver and other organs involved in metabolism and in eating behavior."

A 10 centimeter long impermeable sleeve was used to secure the stomach outlet and outlet of the duodenum and upper jejunum in the animals. This device prevented the area from sensing and absorbing the nutrients and also facilitated the flow of undigested nutrients to the lower jejunum.

"A key finding of this study is that the device induced a decrease in food intake as part of its effect and does not act by reducing absorption of nutrients," Kaplan says. "Like gastric bypass, it appears to change the way that neural and endocrine signals stimulated by nutrients act on their target organs. We still don’t know much about the mechanisms underlying these effects, but we and several other groups are working hard to improve our understanding."

The next most important question that comes to our mind is what kind of food is absorbed by the body and when are these stored to the adipose tissue? Food that we eat contains mostly of water and nutrients like – carbohydrates, proteins and dietary fats. Our gastrointestinal tract system is designed to separate, digest and absorb these nutrients according to their ability to convert into glucose. The excess of these nutrients in stored in the adipose tissue.

Usage and Storage of Carbohydrates:

Carbohydrates are most readily convertible to glucose and are major source of energy for the body. Most of the carbohydrates are converted to glucose in the in the digestive tract itself. The liver then supplies the glucose so formed as energy to various body cells. On the usage of the most immediate energy requirement, the residual glucose formed by carbohydrates is either converted to glycogen or into fatty acids. While Glycogen is stored in the liver or muscles to be used as a temporary source of energy, fatty acids are stored in the adipose cells or the fat cells.

Usage and Storage of Protein:

Proteins are essentials for the cell repair and formation activity to take place in the body. Small intestine breaks the proteins into amino acids that are supplied by the liver to the body cells. Over produced amino acid either gets converted to sugar and is used for immediate energy requirements or keep circulating in the body through the bloodstream. Some part of the surplus amino acids are converted into fatty acids and get deposited in the adipose cells.

Usage and Storage of Dietary Fats:

Small intestine divides dietary fats into fatty acids and glycerol in the stomach. The lymphatic system then distributes these to the cells for various uses including usage as energy in case of absence of enough carbohydrates. However only a little dietary fat (about 5%) is converted to glucose and the body does not prefer them as the energy source, most of it is stored in the adipose cells as fats.

Senior author and researcher Mark Friedman quoted "These findings suggest we may someday be able to use a simple blood test to identify those at risk for obesity," Mark, a PhD who works as a behavioral physiologist at Monell Center added "The ability to identify more susceptible individuals would make it possible to target obesity-prevention resources on those who need them most."

The bases of research, triglycerides, are a part of fat cells that are stored in the fat zones of the body and are transported to these zones through the bloodstream. These cells are a part of the fatty food items and are manufactured within our bodies as well.

Obesity is a problem faced by people worldwide. A high fat and carbohydrate diet that promotes weight gain is blamed mostly for obesity. Since two different people may gain different weight while they consume similar diet it is considered that the genetics of the people is the main factor that drives weight gain behavior in individuals due to high-fat food intake.

At present the world has nothing to predict vulnerability of the individuals towards diet induced obesity. Physicians do not rely on any clinical tests for identifying individuals that may become obese in future. The findings of these current tests coupled with the future studies to thoroughly test the mechanism that brings changes in the blood triglyceride levels do indicate towards the possibility of a blood test becoming a useful tool for the said purposes in future.

"The differences in weight gain associated with high-fat diets indicate that genetically-determined factors contribute to obesity," Friedman says and adds "We have shown that these genetic factors are related to the body’s ability to burn fat. We now need a better understanding of how this relates to blood triglyceride levels."

There have been studies that observed lesser dopamine release in obese people as compared to lean people and thus resulting in prevalent overeating in obese.

For this study that was conducted on women, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used. The women were given chocolate milkshakes to eat that are known to produce less than normal dopamine. The results established that the women with weaker "reward circuitry" were at a higher weight gain risk and were eventually prone to become obese, more so in case of women having the genes which are associated with a weakened dopamine signaling in the brain.

Senior researcher and lead author Eric Stice observed "Although recent findings suggested that obese individuals may experience less pleasure when eating, and therefore eat more to compensate, this is the first prospective evidence for this relationship," Eric said further "The evidence of temporal precedence suggests it is a true vulnerability factor that predates obesity onset. In addition, the evidence that this relation is even stronger for individuals at genetic risk for compromised signaling in these brain regions points to an important biological factor that appears to increase risk for obesity onset."