The Biologic Roles of Leptin in Metabolism, Leptin Physiology and Obesity: On the Mechanism of Action of the Hormone in Energy Balance
Reporter: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN
More than $140 billion is spent each year in the United States to treat obesity-related diseases, according to the CDC.
Worldwide obesity rates have doubled since 1980, and most people now live in countries where more deaths are caused by overweight and obesity than by malnourishment, according to the World Health Organization.
Treatment with leptin was approved in the United States in 2014 for use in congenital leptin deficiency as well as in an unusual syndrome of lipodystrophy, but the protein has not been readily available for clinical experiments.
These are the conclusions in a commentary published June 22 in Cell Metabolism by Harvard Medical School metabolism experts Jeffrey Flier and Eleftheria Maratos-Flier.
Flier, the HMS George Higginson Professor of Physiology and Medicine, and Maratos-Flier, HMS professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, have made significant contributions to the understanding of the metabolism of obesity and starvation in general, and of leptin in particular.
The role for leptin as a starvation signal is now well established. [T]he physiologic role of leptin in most individuals may be limited to signaling the response to hunger or starvation, and then reversing that signal as energy stores are restored
Conclusion
“We continue to believe that healthy and lean individuals exist who resist obesity at least in part through their leptin levels, and that some individuals develop obesity because they have insufficiently elevated leptin levels or cellular resistance to leptin,” Flier said.
“But in science, belief and knowledge are two different things, and as much as we may lean toward this belief, we ought to develop evidence for this hypothesis or abandon it in favor of new potential mechanisms for the regulation of body weight,” he said.
SOURCES
Leptin’s Physiologic Role: Does the Emperor of Energy Balance Have No Clothes?
Seeking evidence for anti-obesity claim – Does the Emperor Have Clothes?
Importance of leptin signaling and signal transducer and activator of transcription-3 activation in mediating the cardiac hypertrophy associated with obesity
Maren Leifheit-Nestler12, Nana-Maria Wagner13, Rajinikanth Gogiraju1,Michael Didié14, Stavros Konstantinides15, Gerd Hasenfuss1and Katrin Schäfer1*
J Translational Medicine: Cardiovascular, Metabolic and Lipoprotein Translation. 2013; 11:170. http://www.translational-medicine.com/content/11/1/170
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1479-5876-11-170
Other related articles on LEPTIN published in this Open Access Online Scientific Journal include the following:
Leptin signaling in mediating the cardiac hypertrophy associated with obesity
Larry H Bernstein, MD, FCAP, Reviewer, and Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN
Reporter and Curator: Dr. Sudipta Saha, Ph.D.
Pregnancy with a Leptin-Receptor Mutation
Reporter and Curator: Dr. Sudipta Saha, Ph.D.
New Insights into mtDNA, mitochondrial proteins, aging, and metabolic control
Curator: Larry H. Bernstein, MD, FCAP
Curator: Stephen J Williams, PhD
Curator: Evelina Cohn, PhD
Fat Cells Reprogrammed to Make Insulin
Curator: Larry H. Bernstein, MD, FCAP
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