Resveratrol as a Fat Burner? New Study Reviewed (Part 2)

"Resveratrol treatment caused the greatest and most consistent loss of fat content."

The above quote is from a recent study completed by researchers at the University of Cincinnati titled, "A High Throughput Live Transparent Animal Bioassay to Identify Non-toxic Small Molecules or Genes that Regulate Vertebrate Fat Metabolism for Obesity Drug Development"

So the title is a bit of a mouthful.  It's important to note the study is the first of it's kind and extremely recent; published on August 27th, 2008 in BioMed Central's, Nutrition & Metabolism Journal.  

This study was a bit complicated for me to decipher but once I had an understanding of the terminology used it was extremely educational.  I've made reading the study results a bit easier by linking to definitions of the more complex terminology used.

Let's go straight to the meat of the study:

The isolation of a small molecule that can activate lipolysis could have therapeutic potential for the treatment of obesity. By extension there is a great need to identify which genes regulate fat metabolism to identify potential mechanisms of targeted molecular medicine.

The studies focus stated above is a starting point for discovering potential therapies and what genes need to be targeted to effectively activate fat loss.

Results

PPAR activators (peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor), beta-adrenergic agonists, SIRT-1 activators, and nicotinic acid treatment all caused predicted changes in fat, cholesterol, and gene expression consistent with a high degree of evolutionary conservation of fat metabolism signal transduction extending from man to zebrafish larvae. All changes in fat content were visually quantifiable in a relative fashion using live zebrafish larvae nile red fluorescence microscopy. Resveratrol treatment caused the greatest and most consistent loss of fat content. The resveratrol tetramer Vaticanol B caused loss of fat equivalent in potency to resveratrol alone. Significantly, the direct administration of NAD (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) decreased fat content in zebrafish. Results from knockdown of a zebrafish GPCR ortholog previously determined to decrease fat content in caenorhabditis elegans support that future GPR142 antagonists may be effective non-toxic anti-obesity therapeutics.

Conclusions

Owing to the apparently high level of evolutionary conservation of signal transduction pathways regulating lipid metabolism, the zebrafish can be useful for identifying nontoxic small molecules or pharmacological target gene products for developing molecular therapeutics for treating clinical obesity. Our results support the promising potential in applying NAD or resveratrol where the underlying target protein likely involves Sirtuin family member proteins. Furthermore data supports future studies focused on determining whether there is a high concentration window for resveratrol that is effective and non-toxic in high fat obesity murine models.

I recommend anyone interested in learning more regarding fat loss using resveratrol to read the entire study.  You can find the study by following this link to " Nutrition & Metabolism."  ( Click here for the PDF version ) It's a great Sunday read!

Live Longer,

Markus