The signal of sex hormones helps burn calories

Anyone who is on a diet can tell you that the body's weight represents the level of food and how much energy is consumed. And the effective way to maintain a healthy weight is by regulating that balance. A new Rockefeller University study suggests that brain receptor cells linked to sex hormones may play an important role in maintaining this balance.

Research shows that metabolic syndrome includes conditions such as obesity, insulin resistance and reduced physical activity, occurring in female mice when estrogen signaling in specific areas of the brain ceases. .

Dr. Pfaff, head of the neuroscience and behavioral biology laboratory, said the evidence shows that mice without estrogen receptor genes will become obese. But because each cell in these anesthetized mice does not have estrogen signaling from birth, these results do not show potential effects on brain development. We use a targeted approach to interfere with the synthesis of receptors on neurons in the nucleus of the central nervous system in the brain region that controls other hunger and detect these mice. also become obese.

Female mice without brain receptor cells linked to estrogen hormones to balance energy develop more weight than normal mice.Scientists say that they gain weight not because they eat a lot but because they lack physical activity (Photo: Rockefeller)

The central nervous system nucleus plays an essential role in regulating the energy balance: when accidentally harmed, the mice become obese. And nerve cells in this area of ​​the brain also show high levels of estrogen receptors.

Based on a theoretical method of genetic manipulation developed by Sergei Musatov, a former doctoral and first author of the document in circulation, scientists have experimented with the role of receptors. estrogen alpha in separate brain areas. This technique uses a virus to transfer strands that interfere with RNA to neurons that will prevent the production of estrogen receptors for proteins. Experimental mice will immediately gain weight even though the amount of food they used earlier has not changed.

Dr. Musatov said we found that increasing the amount of food is secondary, in the first place of weight gain and the mice began to eat more simply to maintain their new weight. Estrogen signaling clearly plays an important role in the central nervous system's nucleus to help maintain the body's normal weight.

Mice without estrogen receptors also consume less energy, meaning they are less active than balanced mice and have lower metabolism. They also develop many characteristics to distinguish metabolic symptoms in people including glucose responses and insulin resistance.

Quote: saved record of the 104 National Academy of Sciences (7): 2501-2506 February 13, 2007

Anh Phuong