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Home » Cholesterol News

Brain Has 'Remote Control' for Cholesterol Regulation

by Kathy Jones on June 07, 2010 at 5:19 PM Cholesterol News

Researchers say that circulation of cholesterol is regulated in the brain by the hunger-signaling hormone ghrelin. The finding points to a new potential target for the pharmacologic control of cholesterol levels.

Brain Has 'Remote Control' for Cholesterol Regulation

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The animal study, led by Matthias Tsch�p, MD, professor in the University of Cincinnati (UC) endocrinology division, appears online ahead of print Sunday, June 6, 2010, in Nature Neuroscience.

"We have long thought that cholesterol is exclusively regulated through dietary absorption or synthesis and secretion by the liver," says Tsch�p. "Our study shows for the first time that cholesterol is also under direct 'remote control' by specific neurocircuitry in the central nervous system."

The hormone ghrelin inhibits the melanocortin 4 receptor (MC4R) in the hypothalamus and is important for the regulation of food intake and energy expenditure. Tsch�p and his team found that increased levels of ghrelin in mice caused the animals to develop increased levels of blood-circulating cholesterol. This, the authors say, is due to a reduction in the uptake of cholesterol by the liver.

The research team next tested the effects of genetically deleting or chemically blocking MC4R in the central nervous system. This test also yielded increased levels of cholesterol, suggesting that MC4R was the central element of the "remote control."

"We were stunned to see that by switching MC4R off in the brain, we could even make injected cholesterol remain in the blood much longer," says Tsch�p, a researcher at UC's Metabolic Diseases Institute.

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