Laser light, a dye and a nonsurgical implant could help overcome obesity



Weight-loss surgery can be a successful method of treating obesity when diets and exercise are insufficient. However, those who don't want surgery do have alternative choices, such as having a stomach implant or an appetite-suppressing balloon placed. Researchers now report in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces that they have improved that process in lab animals by covering an implant with a laser-activated dye that kills cells generating ghrelin, the "hunger hormone," in a way that kills the cells.

Following local anesthetic, implants can be placed in the stomach through the mouth. A brand-new implant was created in 2019 by Hwoon-Yong Jung, Jung-Hoon Park, and other collaborators. The "intragastric satiety-inducing device" (ISD) comprises of a disk that lies in the stomach's entrance and a stent that is implanted in the lower esophagus. A hole in the center of the disk allows food to pass through. Tests on pigs revealed that the ISD increased feelings of fullness and decreased levels of ghrelin, a hormone generated by cells towards the top of the stomach, which both reduced food intake and weight growth. However, the gadget led to issues including migration into the stomach and acid reflux. In their most recent experiment, Jung, Park, Kun Na, and colleagues sought to see whether they could further reduce ghrelin by coating the ISD disk with a substance that, when exposed to laser light, could kill some of the cells that produce ghrelin. The adverse effects of the initial design might then be avoided by removing the implant.

In this pilot trial, the scientists put ISDs in the stomachs of young pigs after coating them with methylene blue, an FDA-approved medication. The coating, when subjected to laser light, produced singlet oxygen, an energetic form of oxygen that quickly vanished after killing neighboring ghrelin-producing cells in the stomachs of the pigs. In comparison to an untreated pig, the therapy lowered ghrelin levels and body weight growth by 50% after one week. However, these changes waned in the following weeks unless the light treatment was repeated. The straightforward approach may grow into a novel form of minimally invasive therapy to aid obese individuals in losing weight, the researchers said.

Source: American Chemical Society

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