Daily HealthBeat Tip

Programmed for fat

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

If you become very fat, it's very hard to become thin. And a researcher at Duke University Medical Center thinks one reason is that muscle cells become programmed to amass fat.

Deborah Muoio's study in the journal Cell Metabolism was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Muoio found the muscle of fat people was marbled with globules of fat, and had higher levels of an enzyme called SCD-1, which builds fat. Then, when she forced muscle cells from thin people to overproduce SCD-1, their fat storage increased and fat burning decreased.

Muoio thinks the muscle cells of fat people might have reprogrammed themselves genetically to add fat. But she thinks it's possible to undo those changes.

"One recommendation would be that you could circumvent this by increasing physical activity." (six seconds)

Learn more at www.hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: December 14, 2005

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