Regulating asprosin levels can control appetite and weight

Researchers have discovered a new hormone called asprosin, that regulates blood-glucose levels. New studies on the hormones showed that asprosin also acts on the brain, stimulating the hunger center in the hypothalamus to control appetite and body weight. This opens an intriguing possibility for developing treatments for overweight people. They discovered asprosin when studying individuals affected by a rare medical condition called neonatal progeroid syndrome.

Patients with neonatal progeroid syndrome have a mutation in the FBN1 gene that causes them to lack a small piece of the fibrillin-1 protein. In individuals without the FBN1mutation, this small piece, which we named asprosin, is cut and released into the circulation from the end of the protein.
One of the cardinal features that defines neonatal progeroid syndrome is extreme thinness or very low body weight. This allowed measurement of how much food they ate relative to the number of calories they burned every day.

Compared with individuals with normal weight, neonatal progeroid syndrome patients have abnormally low appetite.
To investigate how the mutation affected the patients' appetite, the researchers genetically engineered mice to carry the same genetic mutation the patients have. The result was mice that mimicked the human condition; they had low blood asprosin levels, low appetite and were very thin.

In the mouse model, researchers were able to reverse the low appetite by administering asprosin to the mice.
To understand how asprosin controls appetite. Asprosin interacts with neurons in the appetite center of the hypothalamus. There are two types of neurons involved in appetite control. One type, the AgRP neurons, stimulates appetite while the other type, POMC neurons, suppresses it.

Asprosin works on both types of neurons in an opposite manner; it activates appetite-stimulating AgRP neurons and it deactivates appetite-suppressing POMC neurons. The resulting effect of these two asprosin actions in the brain is an increase in appetite, a phenomenon that is deficient in individuals and mice with neonatal progeroid syndrome. The researchers also studied individuals with obesity and found that they had increased levels of blood asprosin.
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Vegetarian diet effective for weight loss

Eating vegetables to lose weight is more effectively than conventional low-calorie foods, vegetables improve body metabolism by reducing muscle fat.

Seventy-four participants with type 2 diabetes were randomly assigned to eat either a vegetarian diet or a conventional anti-diabetic diet. The vegetarian diet consisted of vegetables, grains, legumes, fruits and nuts, with animal products limited to a maximum of one portion of low-fat yoghurt per day.

The conventional diabetic diet followed the official recommendations of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD). Both diets were restricted by 500 kilocalories per day compared to an isocaloric intake for each individual.

The vegetarian diet was found to be almost twice as effective in reducing body weight, resulting in an average loss of 6.2kg compared to 3.2kg for the conventional diet.

They found that both diets caused a similar reduction in subcutaneous fat. However, subfascial fat was only reduced in response to the vegetarian diet, and intramuscular fat was more greatly reduced by the vegetarian diet.

Vegetarian diets proved to be the most effective diets for weight management. However, it also showed that a vegetarian diet is much more effective at reducing muscle fat, thus improving metabolism.


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Sedentary lifestyle increases the risk of kidney and bladder cancer

A team of researchers at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, NY, set out to examine the link between a sedentary lifestyle and the risk of developing kidney or bladder cancer.

Researchers analyzed 160 people with renal (kidney) cancer, 208 bladder cancer patients, and 766 healthy
controls. Participants were asked to report on their levels of physical activity - whether they took part in any regular activity or not.

 Those who said that they had never done so were classified as "physically inactive." Researchers used
unconditional multivariable logistic regression methods to calculate the odds of developing renal and bladder cancer.

Inactivity increases kidney and bladder cancer risks by up to 77 percent
Specifically, they found that those who were physically inactive were 77 percent more likely to develop renal cancer and 73 percent more likely to develop cancer of the bladder.

A similar risk was found among people
with obesity and people with a normal body weight. This suggests that sedentary lifestyle is an independent factor that influences bladder and renal cancer risk.

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