Discovery of Hormone Offers Hope for Obesity Drug

Obesity Treatment

When the appetite-enhancing hormone ghrelin was discovered a few years ago, researchers thought they had found the last of the major genes that regulate weight.

They were wrong.

Introducing: obestatin, a newly discovered hormone that suppresses appetite.

The finding, published in the Nov. 11 issue of Science, offers a key to researchers developing treatments for obesity. In a nation that desperately needs to slim down - the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 65 percent of Americans over the age of 20 are either overweight or obese - obestatin is likely to generate interest from scientists and drugmakers alike.

The research was sponsored by Johnson