Amgen Says Leptin Helped 210-Pound Girl Lose Weight

Researchers say Amgen’s genetically engineered hormone leptin helped a 9-year-old, 210-pound girl safely drop 36 pounds over a year.

“The finding doesn’t conclusively prove leptin can help millions of overweight Americans shed pounds, since most of them already have plenty of the hormone--unlike the unnamed girl in the study with a mutation in her leptin gene,” researchers from the United Kingdom and Amgen wrote in this month’s New England Journal of Medicine. “Still, it gives researchers a better understanding of the hormone and could help them tailor a potent therapy to aid in weight loss.”

Leptin, produced by fat cells, is thought to signal fullness to the brain and help direct the body to stop eating. In leptin-deficient mice, shots of the hormone led to a dramatic drop in weight and boost in energy levels.

Most overweight humans, however, have plenty of fat cell-produced leptin--leading some experts to believe that the body doesn’t properly register or respond to the hormone.

The study “confirms the importance of leptin in the regulation of body weight in humans and establishes an important role for this hormone in the regulation of appetite,” the researchers said.

“The response seen with her is clearly different than the response we’ve seen with our other patients,” said Carl LeBel, associate director of product development at Thousand Oaks-based Amgen. Still, he said, “it’s an ideal situation to continue to learn about leptin.”