I do not know if there is a mortal resident in the northern hemisphere of the planet who is unaware of the Dukan diet, but if so, he will soon know her. There are so many people who are following this diet or other diets now that it is summer that it seems clear that we are experiencing a serious problem of overweight in our population.
The children are not saved. 26.6% of children between 6 and 10 years are overweight and, of that percentage, 19.1% are obese. You could say that we are reaching a point where a large number of our children will have obesity in the future, with all that this entails for their health and also for our health system in terms of spending, because obesity increases the risk that chronic diseases appear.
For this reason, in addition to influencing eating habits and the recommendation to play sports (we would have to hunt again to eat, I think), new options are being investigated, such as the obesity vaccine, which is apparently having good results with animals.
It is a vaccine that suppresses the hormone ghrelin, which is responsible for the appetite we have and is also linked to the metabolic expenditure of the body.
By administering this vaccine to mice it has been observed that the amount of food ingested decreases and that it also increases metabolic expenditure, thus increasing the number of calories burned.
To show it in data, after 24 hours of the administration of the first vaccination, obese mice ate 18% less than the mice in the control group. After the final vaccine vaccinated mice ate only 50% of what unvaccinated mice ate. The effects of the treatment lasted two months, so if we consider that the mice live about 18 months, those two months would be equivalent to four years of ours.
The research is being carried out at the University of Porto, in Portugal, and is based on the use of a non-infectious virus whose presence in the organism generates antibodies that attack ghrelin, producing its suppression.
The goal of the vaccine is to live with the right diet and daily exercise as a treatment for obesity. I do not know if it will appear as a treatment, but it would not be bad to help those people who change their habits for a healthier life. On whether it can be given to young children, no idea ... although it may be dangerous, because children need to eat to grow.
