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ScienceDaily reports that:
Many patients with advanced stages of cancer, AIDS, tuberculosis, and other diseases die from a condition called cachexia, which is characterized as a "wasting" syndrome that causes extreme thinness with muscle weakness. Cachexia is the direct cause of roughly 20% of deaths in cancer patients. While boosting food intake doesn't help, and no effective therapies are available, new research in the Cell Press journal Cell Metabolism points to a promising strategy that may stimulate weight gain and muscle strength.
The research relates to a process that has been gaining considerable attention as a way to combat obesity: the browning of white fat. While white fat normally stores calories, brown fat burns them and generates heat in the process. Therefore, efforts to turn white fat into brown fat may help people lose weight.
Erwin Wagner, of the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre in Madrid, and his colleagues found that in mice and patients with cancer-associated cachexia, white fat undergoes significant changes and turns into calorie-burning brown fat. The transformation leads to increased energy consumption and organ wasting.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Zinho on Wednesday July 23 2014, @01:55AM
I had to read the article (heresy!), but finally figured out that they're researching how to inhibit the conversion from white to brown fat. The wasting they talk about is the result of brown fat burning too much energy, leading to muscle atrophy and extreme weight loss.
The summary and article are a bit confusing because they both point out that the origin of the research here is cures for obesity - other researchers are working on encouraging the conversion to brown fat. The researches are complementary, and success in either direction may help the other.
I wish good luck to both groups!
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