| Title | A Cousin of Viagra Reduces Obesity by Stimulating Cells to Burn Fat, Study Shows | |
| Date | Friday October 08 2021, @06:23PM | |
| Author | martyb | |
| Topic | ||
| from the how-well-do-they-sleep? dept. | ||
A 'cousin' of Viagra reduces obesity by stimulating cells to burn fat:
These findings, published online Oct. 7 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, reveal that a chemical inhibitor of the enzyme PDE9 stimulates cells to burn more fat. This occurred in male mice and in female mice whose sex hormones were reduced by removing their ovaries, thus mimicking menopause. Postmenopausal women are well known to be at increased risk for obesity around their waist as well as at risk for cardiovascular and metabolic disease.
Inhibiting PDE9 did not cause these changes in female mice that had their ovaries, so female sex hormone status was important in the study.
“Currently, there isn’t a pill that has been proven effective for treating severe obesity, yet such obesity is a global health problem that increases the risk of many other diseases,” says senior investigator David Kass, M.D., Abraham and Virginia Weiss Professor of Cardiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “What makes our findings exciting is that we found an oral medication that activates fat-burning in mice to reduce obesity and fat buildup in organs like the liver and heart that contribute to disease; this is new.”
This study follows work reported by the same laboratory in 2015 that first showed the PDE9 enzyme is present in the heart and contributes to heart disease triggered by high blood pressure. Blocking PDE9 increases the amount of a small molecule known as cyclic GMP, which in turn controls many aspects of cell function throughout the body. PDE9 is the enzyme cousin of another protein called PDE5, which also controls cyclic GMP and is blocked by drugs such as Viagra. Inhibitors of PDE9 are experimental, so there is no drug name yet.
Based on these results, the investigators suspected PDE9 inhibition might improve cardiometabolic syndrome (CMS), a constellation of common conditions including high blood pressure; high blood sugar, cholesterol and triglycerides; and excess body fat, particularly around the waist. CMS is considered a pandemic by medical experts and a major risk factor for heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, cancers and COVID-19.
Journal Reference:
Sumita Mishra, Nandhini Sadagopan, Brittany Dunkerly-Eyring, et al. Inhibition of phosphodiesterase type 9 reduces obesity and cardiometabolic syndrome in mice [open], The Journal of Clinical Investigation (DOI: 10.1172/JCI148798)
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printed from SoylentNews, A Cousin of Viagra Reduces Obesity by Stimulating Cells to Burn Fat, Study Shows on 2024-04-24 07:21:10