Section: New Results

A novel model for leptin resistance

Leptin is a major hormone that regulates food intake and appetite in most mammals. Leptin increase in the blood tends to decrease the food intake and leptin is produced in proportion with fat depot. Leptin is therefore a simple probe that feed backs energy reserve to the brain and maintains a constant weight. It is a central hormone for this balance because KO mice without the leptin gene are quickly extremely obese. Also obese people (and animal) tend to have high concentration of leptin suggesting that after a certain point the brain ignores the leptin signal. We developed a mathematical model that explores this resistance developed by neural cells to leptin. This model predicts leptin resistance if food intake is artificially increased and predict a pathway to obesity by such mechanism. This work has been published by H. Soula (Beagle) in collaboration with F. Crauste (Dracula) with co-supervised PhD student Marine Jacquier[19] .