Gene Therapy Shows Early Promise For Treating Obesity

If you are a rodent, that is.

"With obesity reaching epidemic levels, researchers at the Ohio State University Medical Center are studying a potentially long-term treatment that involves injecting a gene directly into one of the critical feeding and weight control centers of the brain."

And you are in the mood for a brain injection.

"According to first author Lei Cao, assistant professor in the department of molecular virology, immunology and medical genetics, the study involved injecting the BDNF gene in normal mice, diabetic mice and mice fed with a high fat diet, to determine how the gene transfer would affect their weight. 'The gene was active in the overweight mice, but as they lost weight the gene expression was essentially 'dialed down,' using a novel RNA interference approach, thus stopping the weight from continuing to decrease and allowing a stable target weight to be reached,' she says.

During indicated that with the initial results showing great promise, the next step is to obtain the necessary FDA approvals to begin studying the therapy in humans at OSU Medical Center and other centers around the country."

What could go wrong here?

You can bet that we will find out if this "research" gets approved.