July 07: Obesity is growing into a major problem of the world. Obesity is next stage to overweight and not at all a healthy condition. Whether a person suffers from obesity can be made out from the body mass index with exception to the athletes. The number of the children suffering from obesity has just doubled and those of teenagers tripled.
Consumption of the calories more than required leads to overweight and then chronic over weight to obesity. It becomes more dangerous because the person affected by it becomes prone to other diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer etc.
Keeping in view the grimness of the disease, an international conference named “Laprofit-2007” is being held on July 21, 2007 in Coimbature on ‘laparoscopic surgery’ to treat obesity. Dr. C Palanivelu, director of Gem Hospital India Pvt. Ltd and the organisers told that there would be workshops on surgery and lectures as well. Professors from Germany and USA have been called to perform the laparoscopic surgery operations to reduce the weight.
As the problem has taken huge size all over the world there are several research programs going on. Recently, researchers at Washington University made the discovery that a protein called CD36 can play an important role in obesity treatment in the coming time. The presence of this protein is responsible for absorption of lot fatty acids. Mainly it is found in intestine though present even in heart tissue, skeletal muscle tissue, and digestive tract. Intestine produces this protein in big amount, which is responsible for the uptake of fatty acids. Low production of the protein slows down the process of absorption of the lipids and thus reduces the extra fat from the body.
Till now experiments have been conducted on mice but hopefully can be applied to humans as is said by the author and researcher Nada Abumrad. Nada Abumrad says that less production of CD36 would lead to less intake of fat and thus would help in weight loss. But the interference with the function of the protein does not have any other adverse effect is yet to be seen.
Research on the functioning of the protein bears a hope for the people suffering from this basket of diseases called ‘Obesity’.
|
|
Comments:
