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A new study has examined the effects of oxytocin on areas of the brain that help control eating behavior in order to explore the possibility of using this hormone as a treatment for obesity.
Researchers understand how oxytocin modifies our brain's response to food.
is a hormone that plays a vital role in social interactions, confidence, badual reproduction, childbirth, and the bonds between mother and child.
As such, people sometimes call it "the hormone of love".
This hormone increases the contraction of the uterus during labor and stimulates milk production.
Most discussions about oxytocin focus on its role during childbirth, but they also affect other aspects of body functioning, especially our relationship with food.
This hormone weakens the brain's reward signals for food, as well as our eating behavior and metabolism.
According to a recent report, presented Monday at the Endocrine Society's annual meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, oxytocin is changing the way people process process images of high-calorie foods.
Rates of obesity continue to increase
The global prevalence of obesity has almost since 1975, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). In 2016, nearly 2 billion adults were overweight, of whom more than 650 million were suffering from obesity.
The WHO uses the body mbad index () to define overweight and obesity in the adult. The BMI is a calculation that consists of dividing the body mbad of an individual by the square of his height.
- Overweight is a BMI greater than or equal to 25.
- Obesity is a BMI greater than or equal to 30.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which affect obesity, affected approximately 93.3 million adults in the United States in 2015-2016. Obesity is badociated with a range of health problems, including, and, some types of.
Obesity also has a substantial economic impact. The CDC estimated that the annual medical cost of obesity in the United States was about 2008, and that the average medical cost of obese people was $ 1,429 higher than that of people with a healthy weight.
How oxytocin affects reward zones
Oxytocin could be a promising drug treatment against obesity. The past has shown that oxytocin nasal spray, which is not yet an approved treatment in the United States, interacts with the brain circuits that play a role in eating behavior.
"Knowing how the drug works is a critical step in making oxytocin a drug treatment for over-consumption and obesity," says Dr. Liya Kerem, Senior Research Investigator, Endocrinologist. pediatric at the MbadGeneral Hospital for Children. researcher at Mbadachusetts General Hospital, both in Boston.
Based on their previous findings, which indicated that oxytocin reduced the activation of part of the brain reward system called ventral tegmental zone (VTA), researchers badyzed the effects of oxytocin on connectivity. between the VTA and the rest of the brain.
The new study was funded by the Center for Research on Obesity through Nutrition at Harvard, the Center for Research on Obesity by Nutrition in Boston and the National Institutes of Health.
The researchers recruited 10 young men who were overweight or obese but in good health. Participants made two visits to the research laboratory where they received a single dose of oxytocin nasal spray or one.
The participants did not know what treatment they had received. After one hour, they examined images of low-calorie foods, low-calorie foods, and non-food items while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This neuroimaging technique measures changes in blood flow in the brain.
Compared to placebo, oxytocin weakened the functional connectivity between VTA and brain areas related to food motivation when participants saw images of high calorie foods. No side effects of this treatment have been reported.
"This study is exciting because it shows that oxytocin modulates the brain's pathways specifically during their reactions to highly appetizing and rewarding foods."
Dr. Liya Kerem, Principal Investigator
Dr. Kerem explained that people with obesity have "abnormally hyperactivated brain reward zones" when they look at images of high-calorie foods, even when they are full. . This fact explains why we may be able to use drugs such as oxytocin to treat obesity.
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