Abdominal fat hormone promotes more abdominal fat
April 21, 2008 | Source: KurzweilAI
University of Western Ontario researchers have found that abdominal fat makes a hormone that both stimulates hunger and increases the number of fat cells, in a potentially vicious cycle.
It was previously thought that only the brain made Neuropeptide Y (NPY), the most potent appetite-stimulating hormone known, but in obese rats, NPY was produced locally by abdominal fat. NPY stimulates the replication of fat cell precursor cells, which then change into fat cells.