Medicine - Losing weight without chemicals: vibrating pill to satisfy constant hunger
"Effective treatments for obesity require invasive surgical and endoscopic procedures or high patient adherence, making it difficult for patients with obesity to effectively manage their disease." These words begin the summary of a research paper published by a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard Medical School on the science portal "Science.org".
The result of this work should be a kind of pill that patients who want to lose weight can take. However, this is not a new version of the Wegovy and Ozempic weight loss injections(find out more here), but a chemical-free alternative based on vibrations.
Weight loss pill is supposed to send the body a "fullness signal"
You can imagine it like this: The pill, which is no bigger than a standard vitamin tablet, contains a small vibration motor and battery. If you swallow it, contact with gastric fluid dissolves a membrane in the preparation. This activates the motor, which then runs for around half an hour. The vibrations cause the pill to send a kind of "satiety signal" to the body, which leads to less food intake. The end result is supposed to be gentle weight loss.
The researchers explain the effect as follows: The movements of the pill activate receptors in the stomach, which usually only report after a large meal and give the body the signal that it is full. This should make patients feel less hungry. This has already worked in an experiment with pigs, the scientists assure us: animals that had previously swallowed the pill ate around 40 percent less food.
Typical side effects of chemical preparations should be eliminated
Another advantage of the vibration: so far, the researchers are not aware of any side effects that can occur with conventional weight loss products. Time and again, patients who try to combat their obesity with chemical products complain of stomach complaints and digestive problems.
The current model of the so-called VIBES pill(Vibrating IngestibleBioelectronic Stimulator) is excreted naturally by the body after a meal. An alternative is already part of the work. The researchers write: "With improved energy transfer and recharging technologies, implantable or gastric actuators could be developed to eliminate the need for repeated oral administration in patients requiring chronic therapy."
However, the disposable preparations should also hardly be a burden on the wallet: the research team assumes in its work that the cost of a pill, once it is mass-produced, should be no more than one US dollar. Further development work is needed before this is achieved: the next step is to test the tolerability and effectiveness of the concept in humans.
Source: Science
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Source: www.stern.de
