Advertisement

Hormone aids in weight loss in mice

COLERAINE, Northern Ireland, Jan. 4 (UPI) -- A chemical found in the body aids weight loss, improves insulin resistance and reverses diabetes in an animal model, University of Ulster researchers say.

First author Paula L. McClean says GIP is found in a variety of tissues, including the intestine, heart, stomach, brain and in adipose.

Advertisement

The researchers used young, eight-week old male mice divided into groups and housed individually in an air-conditioned room with a 12-hour light, 12-hour dark cycle. Some mice had free access to drinking water and a high-fat diet and others had free access to a standard rodent maintenance diet.

Compared with the standard rodent diet -- the control -- the mice that were fed the high-fat diet for the previous 160 days exhibited increased body weight, energy intake, circulating glucose concentration, cholesterol and triglycerides levels.

This study, published in the American Journal of Physiology -- Endocrinology and Metabolism, showed that blocking GIP activity in mice with established, high fat diet-induced obesity and diabetes resulted in significant weight loss, improvement of insulin resistance and amelioration of diabetes.

Latest Headlines