Obesity is big. A public with a seemingly insatiable appetite for weight-loss products spends more than $35 billion (US) annually on diet products or programs in North America, according to the US Federal Trade Commission. And, basic research findings are accumulating like calories at the holidays. "Recent years have witnessed explosive growth in knowledge of the physiological factors regulating appetite and body weight," stated an editorial last year.1
The first three of this issue's Hot Papers2-4, all from Japanese teams, bolster the idea that ghrelin, a peptide originally implicated in the release of growth hormone, plays a central role in appetite regulation in rodents. A fourth paper from a group at Eli Lilly and Co. shows that, in humans, ghrelin's involvement in the process is less straightforward than expected.5 These findings have important implications for manipulating ghrelin physiology in the quest for drugs to counter eating disorders such as obesity ...
