Much has been made of the holistic properties of drinking red wine. It has been advocated that drinking it in moderation can have substantial health benefits. One glass a day has been shown to have positive health benefits which include warding off heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. Now scientists have developed a drug which has been inspired by red wine, which they claim would allow people to eat as much junk food as they wanted without putting on any weight. It could also, they claim, have many of the health benefits of exercise and may also prevent diabetes.
The drug, which is a synthetic compound that has been developed in the laboratory, is known as SRT1720. It fools the body into thinking that food is scarce and that it has to burn off fat supplies in order to survive. The ingredient in wine that the drug mimics is called resveratrol. The pharmaceutical company Sirtris has already developed a concentrated form of resveratrol in a pill form.
A key to whether or not this drug will eventually be approved for use in obese patients will be its clinical effectiveness and the side effects that it produces. A few weeks after Acomplia was withdrawn in Europe, the issue of possible side effects is a pressing one. Regulators are not keen to approve drugs whose side effects are seen to outweigh their potential benefits.
In experiments, mice that were given the new drug did not put on any weight even though they were fed fatty, high calorie foods. They were also able to run twice as far as the mice that were not given the drug. The drug triggers a protein called SIRT1 that plays a key role in regulating the body’s supply of energy. This results in the body eating into its fat supplies, even when enough food is being consumed to sustain the body.
It is predicted that the drug is about seven years away from being available on the market, though scientists have warned that a lot of research needs to be done in the meantime, particularly into potential side effects. Watch this space....