New Weight-Loss Drug Also Reverses Diabetes

Fatostatin stops the body from making fat, instead releasing the energy from food. The only bad news is that to this point, scientists admit, drugs that have proven very effective at weight loss in mice have little effect in humans. For example, a hormone called leptin will make rats and mice drop weight, but does little for an obese person.

Salih Wakil of Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, Motonari Uesugi of Kyoto University in Japan and colleagues wrote in the journal Chemistry and Biology about fatostatin. They said the drug interferes with a number of genes turned on by overeating.

Admitting the issues with mice, rats and humans in terms of weight loss drugs, Wakil hopes this drug will prove different. His team has already patented the drug and is looking for a drug company partner.

After four weeks, mice injected with fatostatin weighed 12 percent less. They also had 70 percent lower blood glucose levels. The drug also had effects on prostate cancer cells they said, something that may help explain links between prostate cancer and obesity.