Muscle-targeted injection therapy is the answer apparently

Feb 27, 2015 13:39 GMT  ·  By

A team of scientists from the University of Iowa and the Iowa City VA Medical Center have come up with a way for people to lose weight quickly, or at least to finally start doing it if nothing they've tried works.

Obesity is a problem for many people, especially in developed countries where fast food is the order of the day, and it has caused quite a few problems.

Setting aside the social stigma that obese people suffer from, however undeserved, excess weight can lead to a higher risk of heart attack, among other things. It also kills any hopes people may have of doing well in sports.

Ironically, bullheadedly plowing through fitness and sports routines is one of the surest ways to combat being overweight.

Sometimes, though, even the best exercise and diets fail to bring in results, leading to depression on top of everything else.

The anti-obesity injection

It's not quite what that choice of words would suggest, but the latest invention from the University of Iowa and the Iowa City VA Medical Center comes as close to it as anything ever could.

The purpose of the injection is to increase energy use during workout routines by making muscles use energy less efficiently. Thus, even mild exercise can result in weight loss over a relatively short period of time.

This is the first time when energy efficiency showed that it can be manipulated in a “clinically translatable way” according to Denice Hodgson-Zingman, MD, UI associate professor of internal medicine.

How the procedure works

A compound called vivo-morpholino is injected into the thigh muscles. This has been tested on mice only, so far, but results were promising.

The compound suppressed the production of ATP-sensitive potassium (KATP) channel, a protein that is responsible to regulating the energy efficiency of skeletal muscles. Protein loss and calorie burn was greater than for mice not injected, as compared during treadmill tests.

It's also worth mentioning that the injection only affected the thigh muscles without harming the other muscles nearby or organs.

No clue when a therapy will be developed based on this new injectable compound, but we're thinking in a few years or so at most.