Researchers from the Life Sciences Institute of the University of Michigan (USA) have discovered that amlexanox , a drug that until now was prescribed to treat asthma, could end obesity and diabetes . As published by Alan Satiel and his colleagues in the journal Nature Medicine , one of the reasons why weight-loss diets are ineffective when it comes to losing weight in some people is that their bodies adapt to the reduction of calories by slowing the metabolism to "defend body weight" and not allow "one gram of fat to be lost." Amlexanox works by modifying the metabolic response to excess stored calories, thereby blocking genes that cause metabolism to stop unnecessarily. In this way, the body burns more energy and stores less fat.
In their experiments with mice, the researchers have found that the drug helps to lose weight both in mice that are obese due to genetic causes and those that gain weight from eating a hypercaloric diet . And that, as if that were not enough, the treatment remedies some metabolic problems such as diabetes or fatty liver.
The drug has been on the market in Japan for more than 25 years, so if it is shown that its effectiveness is similar in humans to rodents, it could be used very soon to treat obesity, already elevated to the category of a global epidemic.
