Leptin to be added to Formula Milk and Other Foods

Formula milk and other foods may be supplemented with leptin hormone to prevent obesity according to researchers.

A team of researchers at the Clore Laboratory at the University of Buckingham, led by Dr Mike Cawthorne, are looking at adding leptin to formula milk and other foods.

Medical News Today reported on 26/4/2007 the foods will be supplemented with leptin, the hunger hormone. Those who take the foods early in life should remain permanently slim. “Like those people who are lean by nature even though they overeat? like we all do - they will tend to be inefficient in terms of using energy,” says Mike Cawthorne, who heads the Metabolic Research group at Clore.

Seemingly bolstering their argument is the fact that feeding the hormone leptin to pregnant rats has been found to have a lifelong impact on their offspring's predisposition to obesity. Animals born of leptin-treated mothers remain lean even when fed a fat-laden diet, while those from untreated dams gained weight and developed diabetes. (Science Daily 23/4/2007).

These researcher’s suppositions are based on pregnant rats, not pregnant women. Nor does the abovementioned study have anything to do with supplementing leptin to baby rats or human babies through formula milk and other foods.

Consider that researchers at Purdue University found that the amount of leptin in breast milk correlates with the amount of body fat of the mother; obese mothers produce large amounts of leptin, thin mothers produce almost no leptin in their breast milk. Previous studies have suggested that breast-feeding may prevent obesity later in life.

Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

According to a recent article in The Sydney Morning Herald some specialists in the field have condemned the search for a medical answer to obesity, saying it is a modern social ill and that people need to adjust their lifestyles, not look for an artificial quick fix. Others say the translation to baby food would be impossible as people will not put their children forward for trials of the formula when they do not know the risks involved.

BBC News reported that Steve O'Rahilly, professor of clinical biochemistry and medicine at the University of Cambridge said: “The notion that leptin in baby milk will prevent human obesity is currently in the realms of wildly optimistic science fiction.” Dr Ian Campbell, honorary medical director of the charity Weight Concern said: “Without evidence that this works in humans, it is pure flight of fancy that those consuming leptin from infancy will never get fat.” (BBC NEWS http://news.bbc.co.uk 22/4/2007).

Research into the hormone leptin in human trials has so far proved disappointing.

Previous experiments in treating obese people with leptin have failed as people continued to overeat.

Gina Kolata reported in The New York Times 31/10/1999: To make things worse, a hormone called leptin that was supposed to be the magic bullet for obesity, making people effortlessly lose fat while retaining muscle, looks like a bust. In a preliminary study reported last week, most people who took leptin lost little or no weight - one fat person who took the highest dose actually gained 20 pounds.

Normally, when leptin levels in blood go up, the brain signals us to stop eating. But since obesity isn’t the result of a lack of leptin, it is a lack of response to leptin, and obese individuals tend to have more and larger leptin-producing fat cells (leptin is secreted by fat cells) than thinner people, their leptin levels increase substantially with every pound of additional weight gain.

It’s almost here, altering the predisposition of a child with baby formula. Fast-food giants like McDonald's should be happy with this news.

If that’s not enough, reports also indicate that leptin-based products may also find their way into the pet obesity market.

Related Articles:

Leptin Supplements & Weight Loss

Leptin and Weight Loss – Leptin Resistance

Copyright 2007 Kevin Flatt. Disclaimer: The information contained in this article is presented for information purposes only and is in no way intended to replace professional medical care or attention by a qualified practitioner. It cannot and should not be used as a basis for diagnosis or choice of treatment.