Neuroendocrine plasticity in obesity

• Applicant: Dr. Yvonne Ritze
• Subject Area: Nutritional Sciences
• Term: from 2015 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 275055184

Worldwide the prevalence of obesity is rising, leading to an increase of diseases like diabetes, cardio vascular disease and metabolic syndrome, creating a heavy economic burden for the health care systems. More than 30% of the US population is obese, 65% are over-weight. Steady weight gain is associated with a dysregulation of the energy metabolism, which is detectable in humans and animal models. The risk of metabolic dysregulation becomes visible when after weight reduction the lower weight is difficult to consolidate. Success can only be achieved with permanent and consequent behavioral changes. Similar, in an animal model a dysregulation was detected after a high caloric diet that was not completely reversible after feeding a standard diet. Therefore, this proposal is built on the assumption that the obesity associated metabolic dysregulation is preserved within a metabolic memory. With this background the planned project raises the question, if in addition to phenotype changes key markers exist which show the begin of the underlying and causally linked metabolic dysregulation and its processing towards the metabolic memory. For that purpose, the beginning of the metabolic dysregulation will be extensively characterized on central neuronal level and within the periphery during the pathogenesis of obesity. Human studies will give insight into central neuronal activity concerning the gut-brain axis. Thereby, the activity of the vagus nerve during food intake and sleeping periods in obese and normal weight patients will be measured. In the mouse high-caloric diets and learning paradigms will be applied to measure neuronal plasticity in an obesity associated brain region. In addition obesity associated marker will be detected in the small intestine and blood in human and mouse. The results will give insight into networks of central neuronal and peripheral signaling that induce and maintain the obesity associated metabolic dysregulation.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Switzerland
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Bernd Schultes