Researchers identified a hormone that controls glucose levels in blood related to appetite and weight. The new hormone acts on the brain, waking up the hunger in the hypothalamus to control appetite and body weight.
The study led by Dr. Atul Chopra, a medical geneticist at Baylor College of Medicine, discovered the new hormone called Asprosin. This hormone opens possibilities for treatments in overweight people where there is no effective treatment exist till now.
Neonatal Progeroid Syndrome
We discovered asprosin when studying individuals affected by a rare medical condition called neonatal progeroid syndrome, said Chopra, corresponding author, Caroline Wiess Law Scholar and assistant professor of molecular and human genetics and molecular and cellular biology at Baylor College of Medicine. We found that patients with neonatal progeroid syndrome have a mutation in the FBN1 gene that causes them to lack a small piece of the fibrillin-1 protein. In individuals without the FBN1mutation, this small piece, which we named asprosin, is cut and released into the circulation from the end of the protein.
The fundamental features define neonatal progeroid syndrome is thin or very low body weight. To understand the cause Chopra and his colleagues analyzed the food intake pattern and metabolic rate of the patients.
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