The brain cells responsible for the desire to consume sugar and its mechanism of interaction with hormones were discovered by a team of researchers. Excessive consumption of sugary foods is at the root of some of the most common diseases that exist today, mainly obesity and type 2 diabetes. Understanding the mechanisms behind the desire to assimilate this substance might be the right way to prevent it.
The research team is led by Matthew Potthoff, professor of pharmacological neuroscience at the University of Iowa, and Matthew Gillum, from the University of Copenhagen.
The researchers mainly focused on the fibroblast growth hormone (FGF21), which is already known to play a role in the body’s energy balance, weight control and insulin sensitivity .
This team of researchers had already discovered that this hormone is produced in the liver when the sugar level increases and that it can act directly in the brain to suppress the preference for the sweet taste.
The same researchers have now discovered which brain cells respond to signals from this hormone in the brain.
This particular interaction is in fact the basis of the desire to take sugar, as described by the researchers themselves in the study published on Cell metabolism.
The researchers also discovered that the action of the hormone FGF21 on specific neurons located in the ventromedial hypothalamus reduces sugar consumption by improving the sensitivity of neurons to glucose.
These discoveries could one day lead to the composition of new drugs which would act directly on the behavior of the hormone FGF21 in order to avoid excessive consumption of sugar in people more susceptible to this problem.
–
