UArizona scientists pinpoint anorexia ' s neurologic origins

This study suggests two important insights to treat anorexia, " Cai said. " One is that we need to target multiple brain regions to develop therapies. We also need to treat multiple conditions. For example, maybe one drug will target nausea and another drug target will target inflammation, and you have to combine them, like a cocktail therapy, to have better therapeutic effects. "The team relied on mice models for their research." There ' s no animal model that can mimic human disease completely, but this is as close as we can get, " Cai said. " For example, there are multiple common features, including a warped body image, a very low body weight, limited food intake and excessive exercise. We can ' t know if an animal has a warped body image, but we can measure the other three features. "One future step – since researchers cannot destroy neurons for human treatment – is to develop a method to silence the neurons temporarily, using drugs or some other method to test if that can prevent anorexia development or speed up recovery for people who have already developed the disorder.
Source: The University of Arizona: Health - Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Source Type: research