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VIDEO: Oxytocin promising therapy for weight loss
NEW ORLEANS — In this video exclusive, Elizabeth A. Lawson, MD, MMSc, of Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School in Boston, discusses the use of the hormone oxytocin for weight loss.
In small randomized placebo-controlled studies of the drug in men with obesity, Lawson and colleagues have documented the effects of intranasal oxytocin on controlling food intake, increasing energy expenditure and lipolysis, and improving insulin sensitivity, as well as elucidating the possible mechanisms of action.
“Taken together these data suggest that oxytocin may reduce food intake by modulating reward-related food motivation and impulse-control neurocircuitry in order to make foods seem less rewarding or improve our ability to resist the impulse to eat,” she said.