Spanish scientists have discovered the mechanism through which the cells that make up body fat produce leptin, one of the main hormones that regulate the feeling of satiety. They have also shown that overweight people have this procedure altered.
The research, which has been published in the journal Cell Metabolism, opens the door to a better understanding of the processes that control body weight and also to advancing in the approach to metabolic diseases such as obesity.
The researcher at the Institut d'Investigació Sanitària Pere Virgili (IIPSV) Sonia Fernández-Veledo explained that when the human body receives food, leptin levels in the blood increase, since this hormone is responsible for sending the satiety signal to the brain. "In the case of people with obesity, more leptin is produced than in the case of those who are thin, but at the same time the phenomenon known as leptin resistance occurs, which means that the body does not respond to this hormone", has targeted Fernández-Veledo.
It also indicated that people with obesity have altered satiety mechanisms. "Our study not only demonstrates the mechanism by which adipocytes produce leptin, but also why fat in obese people does so excessively," she said.
Succinate, an energy metabolite that also acts as a hormone through its receptor SUCNR1, plays a very important role in all these processes. For many years, this metabolite has been attributed a mainly inflammatory role, in addition to being identified as a biomarker of diseases such as obesity and diabetes. However, in recent years, the Research Group on Diabetes and Associated Metabolic Diseases (DIAMET) has shown that this is a complex system, since succinate levels also increase in some physiological situations, such as when we eat food.
"It is in this context where we believe that succinate naturally regulates the functions of our body that control that there is a balance between energy intake and expenditure", pointed out the researcher. Thus, the study shows that succinate would determine the oscillations of leptin throughout the day: "In people with obesity, this mechanism is hyperactivated, which would partly explain the high levels of leptin," he assured.
This scientific advance represents a turning point in the treatment of obesity and opens its doors to future studies aimed at investigating not only other metabolic functions of succinate, but also at exploring therapies that allow restoring this mechanism, stabilizing its levels and recovering its role. that regulate the feeling of satiety.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than one billion people worldwide are obese, data that continues an upward trend. Obesity –alerts the WHO– is directly associated with type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and those related to mental health, hypertension, stroke and various forms of cancer.
The study has been published in the prestigious Cell Metabolism journal and has been led by DIAMET. The research, which has received more than one million euros from the "la Caixa" Foundation and the State Research Agency (Ministry of Science and Innovation),
