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【medical-news】研究表明：吃的过多导致大脑疾病
WASHINGTON - Overeating makes the brain go haywire, prompting a cascade of damage that may cause diabetes, heart disease and other ills, US researchers reported on Thursday.
A woman walks along the boardwalk while leaving the US Open tennis tournament in New York September 4, 2007. [Agencies]
Eating too much appears to activate a usually dormant immune system pathway in the brain, sending out immune cells to attack and destroy invaders that are not there, Dongsheng Cai of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and colleagues found.
The finding, reported in the journal Cell, could help explain why obesity causes so many different diseases. It might also offer a way to prevent obesity itself.
"This pathway is usually present but inactive in the brain," Cai said in a statement.
Obesity is a growing global problem, with 1.8 billion people estimated to be overweight or obese in 2007. Drugs marketed so far to fight obesity have only limited success and, often, severe side-effects.
Cai's team worked in mice, seeking to explain studies that have shown that obesity causes chronic inflammation throughout the body. This inflammation is found in a range of diseases related to obesity, including heart disease and diabetes.
They homed in on a compound known as IKKbeta/NK-kappaB.
Immune cells such as macrophages and leukocytes use it but Cai's team found it in the hypothalamus, a part of the brain linked with metabolism in mice and humans alike.
"The hypothalamus is the 'headquarters' for regulating energy," they wrote.
They found high levels of the compound there but it was normally inactive.
When they fed mice a high-fat diet, it became extremely active. And when it was active, the body ignored signals from leptin, a hormone that normally helps regulate appetite, and insulin, which helps convert food into energy.
Stimulating IKKbeta/NK-kappaB made the mice eat more, while suppressing it made them eat less.
Cai believes his team has discovered a master switch for the diseases caused by overeating.
"Hypothalamic IKKb/NF-kB could underlie the entire family of modern diseases induced by overnutrition and obesity," his team wrote.
Cai does not know why this compound would be in the brain and in the immune system but suspects it evolved long ago in primitive animals that do not have the same sophisticated immune system as modern animals, including mice and humans.
"Presumably it played some role to guide the immune defense," Cai said in a telephone interview. "In today's society, this pathway is mobilized by a different environmental challenge -- overnutrition."
"Knocking out" the gene using genetic engineering kept mice eating normally and prevented obesity. This cannot be done in people but Cai believes a drug, or even gene therapy, might work.
With gene therapy, a virus or other so-called vector is used to carry corrective DNA into the body, but the approach is still highly experimental.
本人已认领该文编译，48小时后若未提交译文，请其他战友自由认领。 Overeating makes brain go haywire: study
研究表明：进食过量导致大脑功能紊乱
WASHINGTON - Overeating makes the brain go haywire, prompting a cascade of damage that may cause diabetes, heart disease and other ills, US researchers reported on Thursday.
华盛顿讯-美国研究员周四报告，进食过量导致大脑功能紊乱，引发一系列的损害，从而导致糖尿病、心脏病和其他疾病。
A woman walks along the boardwalk while leaving the US Open tennis tournament in New York September 4, 2007. [Agencies]
2007年9月4日，一名妇女离开网球巡回赛-纽约美国公开赛时走在散步道上。 Eating too much appears to activate a usually dormant immune system pathway in the brain, sending out immune cells to attack and destroy invaders that are not there, Dongsheng Cai of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and colleagues found.
威斯康星-麦迪逊大学的蔡东胜（音译）和他的同事发现，进食太多可能会激活脑内平时处于休眠的免疫系统途径，发出免疫细胞去攻击和破坏并不存在脑内的“入侵者”。
The finding, reported in the journal Cell, could help explain why obesity causes so many different diseases. It might also offer a way to prevent obesity itself.
这项发表在《细胞》杂志上的发现，或许有助于解释为什么肥胖导致这么多不同的疾病。它还可能会提供一条预防肥胖本身的方法。
"This pathway is usually present but inactive in the brain," Cai said in a statement.
Obesity is a growing global problem, with 1.8 billion people estimated to be overweight or obese in 2007. Drugs marketed so far to fight obesity have only limited success and, often, severe side-effects.
“这条免疫途径通常是存在的，但在大脑里呈静息状态。”蔡陈述道。
肥胖是一个日益明显的全球性问题，2007年超重或肥胖者估计已达18亿。目前已上市的抗肥胖药物取得的成效有限，且通常有严重的副作用。
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作者:admin@医学,生命科学 2011-03-05 05:11
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