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Home > Weight Loss Information > Health Issues > Obesity, a Possible Risk Factor of Cognitive Deterioration
Obesity, a Possible Risk Factor of Cognitive Deterioration
The leptin hormone, involved in the development of obesity, has shown to have a central role in memory functions and learning. A study performed by Scotch researchers warns that the alarming obesity rates related with a leptin deficit could carry over with the years not less alarming rates of dementia.
Tracking previous studies in which the obese population presented a brain tissue much more deteriorated than the non-obese for identical age groups, Jenni Harvey and a team of scientists from the University of Dundee (Scotland) decided to investigate the role of leptin in all this process. Their conclusions were presented for the first time last July in an international biology meeting held in the United Kingdom.
After verifying that lab rats with a leptin deficit experimented when born an altered brain development, Harvey and her collaborators decided to investigate about the participation of the hormone in the functions of the hippocampus. In the beginning, leptin acts as an appetite-regulation hormone, founding itself in the fat reserves of the organism, which controls through specific receptors lodged in the brain hippocampus. This way, the organism counters the lack of energy with hunger; but if the leptin fails, the sensation of hunger does not correspond the organism needs and you eat more than what you should.
A recent European research about obesity estimated that a third part of the inhabitants of the old continent presents overweight and that morbid obesity affects one of every 10 Europeans. On the other hand, in the United States is estimated that the annual costs for diseases derived from obesity reach the 100 thousand million euros.
The situation becomes especially alarming among the infant population and, while sanitary administrations try to restrict the caloric contribution in foods, scientists focus in the capacity of leptin to adequate appetite and intake. It might be that the final word is not on the scales, but on the brain hippocampus. In declarations made to BBC (British network), Jenni Harvey explained that her study corroborates that leptin participates in the signalization between the brain cells and the hippocampus and that the therapeutic administration of this hormone in the dentate gyrus of experimentation animals attains and improves the capability of their memory.
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