United States: The experimental procedure with the purpose of reducing the levels of a hormone that causes hunger by burning off a part of a person’s stomach lining.
What more has the study revealed?
Throughout the procedure, the doctor places the tube down the patient’s throat with a small device that burns the top part of the stomach, also called the gastric fundus.
It’s the section of the stomach that is responsible for the creation of ghrelin, the main hormone whose job is to suppress the appetite, researchers suggested.
In a six-month trial where ten obese women were given the treatment, there was a weight loss of nearly 8 percent compared to the fasting level of ghrelin, during which it reduced by around 40 percent. They are directed to disclose the outcomes in the second week of May at Digestive Disease Week, bringing together physicians at the Washington D.C.
Dr. Christopher McGowan, the lead researcher, and a gastroenterologist and medical director of the True You Weight Loss clinic in Cary, N.C. said, “This relatively brief, outpatient, non-surgical procedure can facilitate weight loss and significantly curb hunger, and it could be an additional option for patients who don’t want or aren’t eligible for anti-obesity medications, such as Wegovy and Ozempic, or bariatric surgery,” as US News reported.
More about the new methodology
Then they thread the tube through the stomach and put some liquid to safeguard irritated stomach walls and further destroy (ablate) the lining of the fundus of the gastric region. Such a low amount of ghrelin-producing cells remain in that part of the stomach.
Consequently, it is in the human stomach universe when it is folding and creating more ghrelin that they found the source of hunger, the scientists found.
Ghrelin is a hormone, which is known as the hunger hormone, produced by the gastric fundus as it fills with food, therefore reduction in its production will refuse to release it.
After being on the procedure, they narrated through a questionnaire that their hunger was reduced by a third, which was one of the best outcomes they felt. The supplied oral test drinks exhibited a 42 percent decrease in gastric volume.
Up to this point the only sure way to slow down the production of ghrelin had been to bypass the fundus, the gastric pouch, the maneuver which has become one of the models used in the gastric bypass, stated the researchers.
Till now, no drugs have been identified that inhibit ghrelin production in their entirety by researchers. Medications for weight loss, such as Wegovy and Zepbound, are peptides designed to provide GLP1, which is a hormone that helps in the reduction of blood glucose levels.
McGowan added, “Obesity and weight are very complex and regulated by multiple hormone pathways. This procedure alters one of these many pathways that make it difficult for people to lose weight and maintain weight loss,” as US News reported.