From:
Sukie Crandall
Date: 2002-08-09 19:43:29 UTC
Subject: obesity in ferrets
To: Ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-Id: <p05111700b979c8f89b67@[10.0.1.24]>
Okay, ferrets aren't usually prone to incapacitating obesity, but the
one ones who are have proven to be terribly frustrating for their
humans. This being an interesting time for research (new
understanding of how malignancies spread, new understanding that
side-stream smoke poses a lymphoma risk for pets, new understanding
of an aggression mechanism, etc. I'm sure that everyone has heard of
the product that is largely made in the stomach which increases
appetite and may have promise for future drugs, but there is a
treatment with drugs now in testing if some research so far done on
mice at Brigham and Women's Hospital by Maria Rupnick et al pans out.
She was studying the formation of blood vessels and actions of
chemotherapeutic agents and found that some angiogenesis inhibitors
now in testing on humans not only prevented future fat gain in mice
with several forms of obesity genes, but actually caused fat
reduction, and in a genetic group which has uncontrollable hunger the
appetites were re-set to normal levels by some mechanism that remains
unknown.
I read of it in the August 3 edition of "Science News" but for the
original article go to the August 6 "Proceedings of the National
Academy of Science".