Could a Vaccine Make You Thinner?
AFrom Focus on Healthy Aging - January, 2007
Scientists are working on a revolutionary new way to fight fat, but until it’s available, tried-and-true methods can help you shed pounds.
Given the current obesity epidemic — about two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese — it’s not surprising that an experimental vaccine for obesity has generated plenty of interest and news coverage. Laboratory tests on the vaccine, although still preliminary, so far have been promising. But experts caution that the technology is still relatively new. “It’s a novel approach, but more research is still needed,” says Robert T. Yanagisawa, MD, director of the Weight Management Program at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
According to a study in the August Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, when researchers gave rats a vaccine against the hormone, ghrelin (the so-called “hunger hormone,” which stimulates appetite), those rats gained less weight than rats that didn’t get the vaccine.
Such news could take vaccines, as well as the fight against obesity, in a new direction. Vaccines traditionally have been used against infectious diseases such as polio, the measles, and chicken pox. These disease vaccines contain a dead or weakened version of the virus or bacteria, which triggers the body’s immune system to recognize and attack that infectious agent in the future. The obesity vaccine works by the same principle: it causes the immune system to launch a response against ghrelin, preventing it from triggering the feeling of hunger.
Safety questions remain
As promising as the research sounds, Dr. Yanagisawa says scientists still have a lot of work to do before the vaccine is proven effective on human obesity. Moreover, researchers also must determine the overall safety of the vaccine, and learn whether the vaccine’s effects are reversible, Dr. Yanagisawa says. If it’s not reversible, the vaccine could potentially cause people’s weight to drop too low.
Other weight-loss options
Sibutramine (Meridia) and orlistat (Xenical) are the only two medications currently approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration for long-term use/ Another option is weight-loss (bariatric) surgery, but doctors usually recommend this only for the morbidly obese because it can have serious side effects and risks.
For now, however, patients looking to lose weight should stick with the tried-and-true, albeit challenging, formula: A healthy diet and exercise.
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