appetite regulator. molecules in the brain that act as the active ingredient in marijuana mouse right room.
Bill Clinton can not know first hand, but millions of marijuana smokers who inhaled the claim that cannabis stimulates appetite. Now, new results show how specific cannabis compounds as the brain can lead to late night refrigerator raids. The results may lead to new drugs against obesity or stimulate appetite and anorexia in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.
Appetite is regulated by molecular signals over a half dozen, all working together in ways that are not yet well understood. Cannabis stimulates appetite in rats and mice; because the brain makes its own marijuana like molecules, called cannabinoids, pharmacologist George Kunos of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in Bethesda, Maryland, and colleagues asked whether cannabinoids help to regulate appetite.
The hunch was right, the researchers report in the April 12 issue of Nature . genetically modified mice whose brains lacked a necessary receiver to detect cannabinoids did not have healthy appetites: They ate 40% less on average than normal mice. And a drug that blocks the action of cannabinoids led normal mice to eat only as much as the mutant animals.
Cannabinoids appear to be a key component of the neural circuit that regulates appetite, Kunos said. of the obese mice and rats can not make leptin, a significant appetite regulating hormone, showed higher levels of both cannabinoids in the hypothalamus, a region of the brain where the leptin is to act. Kunos said that drugs that block or stimulate the cannabinoid signaling could alter people's appetite.
"I think it's a very exciting job ... that reveals an unexpected connection [between leptin] and endogenous cannabinoids," says pharmacologist Daniele Piomelli of the University of California, Irvine. And he and other researchers say that although obstacles remain, the results reinforce the hope that a cannabinoid blocker medication could be used to treat obesity.
Related Sites
the international cannabinoid Research society
An overview of the cannabinoid system in humans
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