New Drug May Suppress Appetite and Burn Body Fat

A new drug under development may help in the fight against obesity by suppressing appetite and burning body fat.

In a preliminary study on mice, researchers at Johns Hopkins University have found that the drug known as C75 allows the mice to feel full on less food while burning fat.

C75 appears to alter the body's survival mechanism that slows down metabolism when less food is eaten over a period of time, making it difficult to lose weight and fat, according to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers fed mice a high-fat diet and measured their levels of malonyl-CoA, a compound that prevents fat from being burned. The mice that were given C75 along with a high-calorie diet burned approximately 33 percent more calories and lost 50 percent more fat than the mice not given the drug, even though they had similar blood levels of malonyl-CoA.

Overall, the mice that were given C75 lost about 20 percent of their body mass with only a moderate reduction in diet.

Researchers are hopeful that C75 has potential as a treatment for obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Other sources: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences