Researchers have said that a treatment for varicose veins reduced the appetite in healthy pigs and could therefore be used as treatment for obese people. Researchers from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore injected a chemical into blood vessels supplying a very specific part of the stomach to cut off production of the hunger hormone ghrelin. In their method, the blood flow through the blood vessel to the top of the stomach or fundus was restricted. This is the area responsible for making 90 % of the hormone. The report published in the journal Radiology said with this method the pigs ate less and tests reveled that their bodies were producing up to 60 % less ghrelin.

Aravind Arepally, M.D., clinical director of the Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design and associate professor of radiology and surgery at the John Hopkins University School of Medicine said, “With gastric artery chemical embolization, called GACE, there’s no major surgery. In our study in pigs, this procedure produced an effect similar to bariatric surgery by suppressing ghrelin levels and subsequently lowering appetite.”

An estimated 205,000 people in the United States underwent bariatric surgery last year. This surgery involves cutting off part of the stomach and at times the small intestine so that people eat less and so their bodies have less time to digest food. Though the procedure is effective in suppressing appetite, it has substantial side effects and complications. “Obesity is the biggest biomedical problem in the country, and a minimally invasive alternative would make an enormous difference in choices and outcomes for obese people,” Arepally said.

The researchers based their study on ten healthy, growing pigs that were monitored over a four week time period. Pigs were selected as anatomically and physiologically they are most akin to humans. Arepally said, "We used pigs because the circulatory system and anatomy is very similar (to humans)."   

Five of the pigs were injected with saline solution using a thin tube threaded through the arteries into the left gastric arteries while the other five were injected with sodium morrhuate, which is a chemical that destroys specific blood vessels leading to the fundus.  "The chemical doesn't really destroy the blood vessels but it destroys the very specific area of tissue that produces the hormones," said Arepally.

Results after four weeks showed that the pigs that were injected with sodium morrhuate had the hormone suppressed by up to 60 % and the use of surgery was kept to the minimum which could complement or substitute for bariatric surgery.

Arepally said talks were underway with pharmaceutical companies in order to work out a better way to try this approach in humans. "Ghrelin is one of these primordial hormones," he said.

"It is a survival hormone. It is very powerful. It is pretty much universal in all animals."

Many earlier studies have shown that treatment of obese animals is far easier than in humans as humans tend to eat even if they are not hungry and for a variety of other complex reasons. "Appetite is complicated because it involves both the mind and body. Ghrelin fluctuates throughout the day, responding to all kinds of emotional and physiological scenarios," Arepally said.

"Certain stresses can causes ghrelin to bump up. But even if the brain says “produce more ghrelin, GACE physically prevents the stomach from making the hunger hormone. Some people, when they try to lose weight, the ghrelin starts to go up -- the ghrelin fights the diet," he added. "One of the things I want to do -- I want to put this chemical in a better format," Arepally said. "We just injected this chemical into the blood vessels."

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the chemical and the procedure are already approved by the Food and Drug Administration.