Antibiotic against obesity
Fat burning in fat cells can be enhanced with the help of cold and the antibiotic enoxacin
Kirill Stasevich, Science and Life (nkj.ru ).
Fat cells come in different types. Some absorb fat in order to accumulate it in themselves – they form white fat. And others absorb fat in order to burn it – this is the so-called brown fat. It plays an important role in thermoregulation, because the metabolic energy from the split fat brown cells give to heat. Previously, it was believed that brown fat is only in animals and infants, but then it turned out that it is also in adults. The idea quickly arose that with the help of brown fat, you can get rid of excess weight – it is enough to stimulate its cells in some way.
Employees of the University of Campinas, the Federal University of Sao Paulo and their colleagues from other scientific centers were looking for a way to influence the regulation of metabolism in cells. In turn, there are many regulatory molecules in each cell, and among such regulatory molecules there is a group of microregulatory RNAs, or microRNAs.
We usually talk about RNA in connection with protein synthesis: information from DNA is copied into a long informational RNA, and then the informational RNA serves as an instruction for assembling protein molecules. But microRNAs work by themselves – they are very small RNA molecules that combine with long "protein" RNAs and thereby have a very strong effect on the production of protein molecules. microRNAs regulate many processes in the cell. By influencing protein synthesis, they change the nature of metabolism. The goal of the researchers was to find a substance that would act on the microRNA so that the body began to burn more calories.
It turned out that a compound called enoxacin could be useful. It is a broad–spectrum antibiotic, but his career as an antibiotic was not very successful - he was replaced by more effective fluoroquinolones. But enoxacin had other talents. An article in Science Advances (Rocha et al., Enoxacin induces oxidative metabolism and mitigates obesity by regulating adipose tissue miRNA expression) states that enoxacin stimulated genes in white fat cells that are responsible for heat production and that are usually active in brown fat. We can say that the antibiotic caused the white fat to turn partly brown: its cells began to consume more oxygen in order to burn more lipid molecules.
Experiments were carried out both with cell cultures growing in a nutrient medium and with mice kept on a fatty diet. The antibiotic was injected into the animals' intraperitoneal space – because if mice received it through the mouth, it would damage the intestinal microflora. Mice were fed fatty foods for ten weeks, and those who did not receive an antibiotic gained 13 grams, and those who received – 8. Obviously, those who were injected with enoxacin burned excess fat more efficiently. In addition, the mice with the antibiotic had less pronounced signs of approaching type 2 diabetes, which usually accompanies overweight.
Moreover, enoxacin acted against fat only when the mice were forced to freeze. If they were kept at 30 ° C all the time, the antibiotic did not have any positive effect on metabolism. That is, he increased the burning of fat to heat the body when there was a need for it.
Although the antibiotic was administered intraperitoneally, there was still a possibility that it acts through the microflora. It is known that intestinal bacteria strongly affect the metabolism, and it largely depends on them whether excess fat will accumulate in the body or not. However, mice deprived of microflora also gained less weight when injected with enoxacin. That is, the antibiotic did not act through bacteria after all.
Further experiments have shown that it does affect the activity of several microRNAs associated with energy metabolism. It is still unclear how much it can be used in medicine, but if clinical studies here are successful, enoxacin-cold therapy may become an effective tool for those who would like to lose extra pounds and improve their metabolism.
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