April 26, 2024

Nonsurgical Implant Could Help Overcome Obesity by Killing Cells Producing Ghrelin, the “Hunger Hormone”

Recommendation: “Photodynamic methylene blue-embedded intragastric satiety-inducing gadget to treat obesity” 6 April 2022, ACS Applied Materials & & Interfaces.DOI: 10.1021/ acsami.2 c00532.
The authors acknowledge assistance from the Korea Medical Device Development Fund grant moneyed by the Korean federal government (Project number: KMDF_PR_20200901_0036).

In this illustration, an implant (blue and gray) develops a sensation of fullness by pushing on the stomach and, when triggered by a laser (black), killing cells that produce the hunger hormone. Credit: Adapted from ACS Applied Materials & & Interfaces 2022, DOI: 10.1021/ acsami.2 c00532.
When dieting and exercise arent enough, weight-loss surgical treatment can be an effective weight problems treatment. Individuals who dont want surgery have other options, including insertion of an appetite-suppressing balloon or other implant in the stomach. Now, scientists report in ACS Applied Materials & & Interfaces that they have augmented that treatment in lab animals by finish an implant with a laser-activated color that eliminates cells producing ghrelin, the “hunger hormonal agent.”.
Implants can be placed in the stomach through the mouth after regional anesthesia. In 2019, Hwoon-Yong Jung, Jung-Hoon Park and coworkers developed a new type of implant. The “intragastric satiety-inducing gadget” (ISD) consists of a stent– which lodges in the lower esophagus– attached to a disk that rests in the opening to the stomach. The disk has a hole in the center to let food through. Tests in pigs revealed that the ISD lowered food consumption and weight gain by improving the feeling of fullness and reducing levels of ghrelin, which is produced by cells near the top of stomach. The gadget caused problems, consisting of acid reflux and migration into the stomach. In their most current project, Jung, Park, Kun Na, and colleagues wanted to discover out if they might reduce ghrelin even more by finishing the ISDs disk with a substance that, with a shot of laser light, might kill some of the ghrelin-producing cells. The implant might then be gotten rid of to prevent the negative effects related to the initial style.
In this preliminary research study, the group covered ISDs with methylene blue– an FDA-approved drug– and then placed them in the stomachs of young pigs. When exposed to laser light, the coating launched singlet oxygen, a stimulated form of oxygen that eliminated close-by ghrelin-producing cells in the pigs stomachs and after that rapidly disappeared. After one week, the treatment lowered ghrelin levels and body weight gain by half compared to an untreated pig, though these differences declined in the following weeks unless the light treatment was duplicated. With further development, the simple treatment might end up being a new kind of minimally invasive treatment to help obese clients slim down, the scientists say.

People who dont desire surgery have other options, consisting of insertion of an appetite-suppressing balloon or other implant in the stomach. Implants can be inserted in the stomach through the mouth after regional anesthesia. Tests in pigs showed that the ISD lowered food consumption and weight gain by boosting the sensation of fullness and lowering levels of ghrelin, which is produced by cells near the top of stomach.