Appetite

Individuals with PWS are, in many ways, perfect subjects for studying the effectiveness of candidate obesity drugs.

A new article sheds a little bit of light on the latest player in obesity – the FTO gene (the fat-mass and obesity-associated gene).

Zebrafish are hot - these little fish are all the rage in the research world these days. They develop very quickly (embryo to fish in just a couple of days) and scientists are developing better ways to manipulate their genes and use them to study human disorders. Obviously, fish are pretty different than humans, but surprisingly many pathways are well conserved across the species.

Some years ago, the dietary pill Fen-Phen was a fairly widely used, effective drug for weight loss, and was even reported to be helpful in PWS in a small clinical trial: Selikowitz M, et al.

Here’s an article of interest from WebMD: Do Bigger Portions Lead to Bigger Kids?http://aolsvc.health.webmd.aol.com/content/Article/107/108575.htm

Modafinil (Provigil) has been suggested as a potential wake-promoting drug that might be helpful in PWS. Interestingly, this article (although a very small study) showed that individuals taking modafinil consumed less food. Compared to amphetamine, which also increases wakefulness and decreases appetite, modafinil did not cause increased heart rate at high doses.

A new article out in the Journal of Clinical Investigation identifies a new role for the enzyme CPT-1 in weight regulation; the link and a commentary are below.