Body weight Flashcards
What is energy balance?
When energy intake equals energy expenditure
Why was BMI created?
- In 1930s incurance companies wanted to determine how likely someone was to die
- The best determiner of this was BMI
What is the healthy BMI range?
17.5-25
Either side of this likelihood to die increases exponentially
How do you work out BMI?
Kg/m^2
What BMI is clinically obese?
Above 30
What is a different way to look at body morphology besides BMI?
Waist to hip ratio
What are the good values for waist to hip ratio for men and women?
- Men, less than 0.85
- Women, less than 0.80
When over 30 BMI what are some co-morbidity risks?
- Diabetes x7 in men and x28 in women
- Cardiovascular disease x3
- Sleep apnea x3
- Some cancers such as ovarian, uterine and bowel
How much a year does it cost the NHS to treat obesity comorbidities?
10 Bill
What has caused the increase in obesity over the years?
Genes haven’t changes much therefore the changing environemnt and where the genes are acting is causing this.
What is the hetirability of obesity?
70%
What did GWAS of BMI show?
- Certain loci have different associations with BMI
- Lots of different genes involved
- Willer et al 2009
What was an exciting gene discovered in GWAS studies and why?
- FTO
- Huge amount of variation in terms of BMI but changes are small
- In KO mice, only 1-2% change
Where are genes showing associations with BMI expressed?
In the brain
Where are genes for waist to hip ratio found?
Expressed in adipose tissue
Who discovered the importancce of the brain in metabolism?
- Clause Bernard
- Stimulated different parts of a dog brain
- If stimulate a part of the spinal cord, increased circulation of blood glucose
What happens in patients with cancer causing the expansion of the pituitary gland?
- Frolics syndrome causing obesity
- KO pituitary in dogs- no change in body weight
- The pituitary is pushing against the hypothalamus
What is the dual centre theory?
- 1940s did a set of experiments, made bilateral electrolytic lesions in the ventromedial hypothalamus
- Rat got fat
- If made in the lateral part, the rats lost weight
- During the 1990s they could identify the neurons in these areas which were a good basis for the theory
What is the homeostasis and set point theory for body weight?
- There is a sensor
- Controller (hypothalamus?)
- And effector (eating, metabolism)
- These cause a body weight set point like blood glucose levels and temperature homeostasis
Does the homeostasis and set point theory for body weight hold up?
- No
- More variation per person in weight, if there was a set point, there wouldn’t be obesity
- Cannot measure our body weight intrinsically
What is the settling point theory?
- Body weight is determined by input and output
- The level of output (energy expenditure) is determined by weight
- If eat more, weight increases and so will energy expenditure as have more tissue to maintain (direct proportion)
- If eat less, energy expenditure goes down
- We reach a settling point as body weight is proportional to unregulated input
What is the dual intervention point model?
- The settling theory holds between a certain range
- If body weight is too low, we hit the lower intervention point- cannot lose more weight as won’t grow, reproduce and will die
- If body weight is too high we hit the upper intervention limit. Would become a prime target for predators and cannot hunt etc
- Genetic factors detemine the intervention points. However, the evolutionary pressure for the upper intervention point has been removed allowing genetic drift and obesity
- Speakman et al 2011
What two theories did electrolytic lesioning lead to?
- Hypothalamus responds to short term signals such as glucose (Sean Mayer)
- Static theory suggesting that hypothalamus responds to longer term regulators such as fat tissue, measuring the energy that is being stored (Gordon Kennedy)
What did the electrolytic short term signal theory suggest?
- As glucose drops, the hypothalamus detects this and we eat (glucose static theory)
- Isn’t necessarily true
Outline support for the static theory?
- Bred a large mouse, hyperphagic and diabetic (Db/Db) who had a single gene mutation
- Bred another large mouse with different genes Ob/Ob
- Because the phenotype was so similar for the two mice, must be a similar pathway?
Outline the parabiosis experiment in support of static theory
- Douglas Coleman took Ob/Ob mouse and joined its circulation to a normal mouse
- Ob/Ob mouse lost weight, suggesting there must be a factor in the circulation which it is missing
- Same with Db/Db mouse, it did not lose weight but the joined mouse did rapidly
- Db/Db has lots of the factor, so much so that it could lend some and the mouse lost weight. Perhaps obese due to a receptor mutation
- When Ob/Ob and db/db connected, ob/ob lost weight as got the factor from db/db
What was discovered to be the factor in which ob/ob mouse was lacking?
- Ob gene encodes for leptin
- Leptin is produced in white adipose tissue
- Acts as a permissive hormone for things such as growth and the lower intervention level
- If introduce leptin into the brain can get rid of the obese phenotype
Explain where leptin deficiency has been seen in humans
- Montague et al 1997
- Early onset obesity
- Bood test showed mutation in the leptin gene
- Injected with recombinant leptin- feeding and body weight dropped immediately
Is leptin deficiency a common form of obesity?
No
Normally late onset not early onset obesity
What neurons in the brain are a target for leptin?
- Arcate nucleus
- VMN
What cells in the arcate nucleus are targetted by leptin and how do we know this?
- Leptin induced phospho STAT3
- Showed pom C cells
- Also SF1 transcriptoin factor
- Hosoi et al 2002
What is creocombinase?
Bacteriophage enzyme
Explain what the cre-lox system showed about pom C cells and leptin?
- Made pom C creocombinase (normal expression of pom-Cre)
- Inserted Lox P into exon 17 of other mouse creating flox mouse
- Cross the two mice, get both trans genes expressed in the same cell
- The creocombinase cutes the lox P sites and mutates the leptin receptor
- Study the offspring
- With both genes, the offspring were obese- leptin receptors in this neuronal site are important for regulation
- Balthasar et al 2004
Where have POMC mutations been discovered?
- Issues in the pathway of POMC in pituitary
- POMC
- Peptide convertases
- Melanocortin receptors
What does the VMN contain?
Leptin receptor and Sf1
What happened if there were no leptin receptors in the VMN?
They no longer responded to leptin
- Dhillon et al 2006
What happened if SF1 neurons were KO’d in the VMN
- Flox for SF1 and Leprin were obese
- Dhillon et al 2006
What happened to Sf1-Cre, Pom-cre, lepr mice?
- The most obese
- Dhillon et al 2006
What is appetite?
Any desires to fulfil bodily needs
What is appetite in relation to hunger?
To eat food driven by hunger and fulfil the bodies metabolic needs (homeostatic feeding)
What is Ghrelin?
- Hormone isolated in 1999
- Natural ligand for synthetic growth hormones
- Produced in the stomach due to pre hormone
- Is the acetylated version which binds to serine 3 amd produces appetite controlling effects
- Desacyl ghrelin also circulates
How is Ghrelin acetylated?
- By Ghrelin O-acetyltransferase (GOAT)
- Adds an octanoyl group
What is ghrelin’s circulation profile throughout the day?
- At each mealtime, there is a increase in the amount of circulating ghrelin
- Because it is released from the stomach, may be a hunger hormone
What happens if ghrelin is injected into the circulation or brain?
Increased food intake
What neurons does ghrelin act on?
Archaic nucleus neurons AgRP in hypothalamus
What transcription factor do the NPY, AgRP and GABA neurons release in the archaic nucleus after injected with ghrelin?
Fos C- useful marker for cellular activity
What can be given to reduce the effects of ghrelin?
NPY antagonist
What neuron has opposing effects to AgRP, explain.
- AgRP increase feeding and decrease energy expenditure
- POMC decrease feeding and increase energy expenditure
- Respond to the same input but in opposing directions
What are AgRP neuron inhibited by?
Leptin
What areas to AgRP and POMC project to in the hypothalamus?
- PVN
- DMN
- Act on cells with receptors for NPY and melanocortin
What is a breakdown product of POMC which has opposing effects to AgRP?
- MSH
- Is an agonist at MC4 melanocortin
- AgRP is an antagonist at this receptor
- Functional antagonisms between the target neurons
Explain the channel rhodopsin-assisted circuit mapping of POMC and AgRP
- Create AgRP-Cre mouse
- Normally, cre cuts the single lox p site but if use two different types of lox in an antiparallel formation, cre flips it into the other orientation and recombines in the same point
- Then inject an adeno-virus containing rhodopsin into the archaic nucleus
- Trans fene is flipped so the AgRP cells only express channel rhodopsin and red fluorescent indicator
- Also crossed cre with POMC
- Drove the expression og a green fluorescent marker, to show that channel rhodopsin is only expressed in the AgRP neuron
- Scott Stoneston
Using optogenetics, how did they do channel rhodopsin-assisted mapping for AgRP?
- Put optical fibre above the nucleus to pulse blue light into the brain and picks up channel rhodopsin
- Saw an increased food intake when pulsing for an hour
- Aponte et al 2011
- Then encorporated into the membrane of neurons and transported down axons to stimulate the terminals of neurons
- Put an optic fibre into areas where AgRP was projecting to
- Stimulated the terminals
- Found PVN increased in feeding and PBN no increase
- Saw where the AgRP neurons project to
- Atasoy et al 2012
What are 4 areas that AGRP/NPY neurons project to and 3 that they don’t based on channel-rhodopsin mapping studies?
DO
- BNST
- PVN
- LHA
- PVT
DON’T
- PAG
- CEA
- PBN
- Atasoy et al 2012, Betley et al 2012
How is it suggested (2 ways) that AgRP neurons cause increased feeding?
- Targets for AgrP neurons contain sim1 transcription factor and perhaps oxytocin
- AgRP neurons are inhibitory as are these neurons. Inhibition of these causes disinhibition of the PAG causing feeding
- Alternatively, another population of MC4 receptors (which AgRP target) are excitatory and project to the PBN
- Neurons here cause satiety. So when inhibit, we stop the activation of the satiety neurons and get feeding
- Stachniac et al 2012, Garfield et al 2015
Outline how fibre photometry is used in studying AgRP
- Record the activity of AgRP in normally behaving mice
- Neurons of interest express activation dependent calcium
- Most increase calcium when become activated
- Took the cre animals and crossed with a calcium indicator (GCAMP)
- Only the AgRP neurons could flip the GCAMP into the right orientation
- Optic fibre shines excitatory light wavelengths into the brain and is picked up by the indicator
- Light is emitted on a different wavelength depending on how much calcium is in the cell (more calcium means more reflected wavelength)
Outline the study that found AgRP neurons are inhibited by food detection
- First experiment was in fed animals, expect AgRP to be lower
- Measured the calcium in these neurons and injected saline (nothing happened) and ghrelin (AgRP was activated)
- If provided the animals with food at the same time as ghrelin, activity dropped
- Experiments in fasted animals. Placed food into the cage, activity of AgRP drops immediately
- Suggestion that these neurons don’t conteol eating itself but telling the animal to go and find food
- If the animal eats, the activity remains low but if they don’t it increases
- Repeated this in fed animals, Presenting with food doesn’t make a difference
Chen et al 2015
How was conditioned place preference study used to determine whether ghrelin cause negative or positive valence?
Pre-test
- Mouse roamed freely between the chambers for 20 mins and preffered side was measured
- Put animal into the preferred side and give ghrelin but it cannot move (20 mins), repeat 3 times
- Inject the mouse with saline in the non-preferred side (20 mins), repeat 3 times
- measure how much food they eat when returned to cage
Test
- Mouse freely choses which chamber it wants to be in
- Mouse spent less time in the preffered side with ghrelin- negative valence as hunger
- When put back in its cage, mouse ate more after ghrelin compared to saline injections
- Schele et al 2017
Explain the closed loop conditioned place preference for ghrelin
- Similar to place preference
- During conditioning, the animal is free to roam but when in the preffered side, stimulate AgRP neurons
- After the conditioning, in the test, lost the preference for side showing the AgRP neuron is causing negative valence
- Betley et al 2015
What are the direct regulators of feeding?
- Feedforward and feedback mechanisms
- Food is in the mouth, we chew, then swallow, then move along digestive tract (feedforward)
- As we continue to eat feedback tells us when we have reached satiation
Where are the direct regulators of feeding located and whats the proof?
- Neuronal apparatus are part of the atrial region of the brainstem
- Because it is an automated process
- Did work on a decerebrate rat, if put food into the rats mouth would continue to eat until it reached satiation
What is satiety?
Period between meals when we don’t have hunger
What are the indirect regulators of feeding and what do they rely on?
- Environmental cues such as…
- How much glucose is in the blood stream
- Stored energy (in fat tissue)
- If food is available
- Time of day
- These need higher brain centres and won’t work in decerebrate animals
What are hormones released by the stomach called?
Enteroendocrine cells releasing peptide hormones
When are enteroendocrine cells release their peptide hormones?
When we are full
Where are enteroendocrine cells located?
- Dispersed in the epithelial lining of the gut
- Are sparse with an apical surface pointing into the lumen and sense nutrients in the gut
- Can act as paracrine hormones on local cells
- Some enter general circulation and act as endocrine hormones
What is the primary substance that enteroendocrine cells detect?
Triglycerides (esters of glycerol and long chain fatty acids)
Whats an 8 carbon chained triglyceride called?
Octanoic acid
Whats an 10 carbon chained triglyceride called?
Decanoic acid
Whats an 12 carbon chained triglyceride called?
Dodecanoic
What is the fatty acid cut off point for the release of CCK?
C12, C18
McLaughlin et al 1999
What are most dietary fatty acid lipid chain lengths?
> C14
McLaughlin et al 1999
Why is C12 around the cut off for CCK?
- Human body temperature is 37 degrees
- C12 melting poing is 42 degrees whereas C11 is 34 degrees
- McLaughlin et al 1999