German hospital finds rare ‘obesity mutation’

TheLocal.de ^ | 15 Jan 2015 10:31 GMT+01:00 | (DPA/The Local)

[Olog-hai]

Doctors at the University Clinic in Ulm have discovered a new disease causing obesity while studying an extremely overweight three-year-old.

The child weighed more than 40 kilos, almost three times as much as a normal three-year-old, and could not stop eating and gaining weight. Researchers found that the “satiety hormone” that tells the body to stop eating was inactive, meaning the child was always hungry. But in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, they described how they were able to bring their patient’s eating and weight under control within days by giving the child an artificial form of the hormone leptin. […]

In the child’s case, it was producing enough leptin—but the doctors found that due to a genetic mutation, its leptin receptors couldn’t be activated by the natural hormones produced by its body. […] But other experts were quick to warn that the the treatment would likely not work for most obese people. …

[GraceG]

And it looks like this:

[Opinionated Blowhard]

Researchers found that the “satiety hormone” that tells the body to stop eating was inactive

There is an effective treatment for not having the hormone that tells you to stop eating -- its called a wife. And depending on which one you get, it can be pretty effective at nagging and telling you how fat you are getting.

[Olog-hai]

Not quite socially acceptable for a three-year-old kid to have a wife.

[17th Miss Regt]

Leptons are light particles. If the child has no leptons in his atoms he will naturally be about two to three times heavier.

Oh, leptin, not lepton. Never mind.

[DannyTN]

Leptin...why fat people are sometimes treated like leppers.

[NativeSon]

Not quite socially acceptable for a three-year-old kid to have a wife

but a three-year-old can be a wife in certain "enlightened" cultures...