Nonsurgical Implant Could Help Overcome Obesity by Killing Cells Producing Ghrelin,

In this illustration, an implant (blue and gray) creates a feeling of fullness by pressing on the stomach and, when activated by a laser (black), killing cells that produce the hunger hormone. Credit: Adapted from ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces 2022, DOI: 10.1021/acsami.2c00532

When dieting and exercise aren’t enough, weight-loss surgery can be an effective obesity treatment. But people who don’t want surgery have other options, including insertion of an appetite-suppressing balloon or other implant in the stomach. Now, researchers report in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces that they have augmented that procedure in laboratory animals by coating an implant with a laser-activated dye that kills cells producing ghrelin, the “hunger hormone.”

Implants can be inserted in the stomach through the mouth after local anesthesia. In 2019, Hwoon-Yong Jung, Jung-Hoon Park and colleagues designed a new type of implant. The “intragastric satiety-inducing device” (ISD) consists of a stent — which lodges in the lower esophagus — attached to a disk that rests in the opening to the stomach. The disk has a hole in the center to let food through. Tests in pigs showed that the ISD lowered food intake and weight gain by enhancing the feeling of fullness and reducing levels of ghrelin, which is produced by cells near the top of stomach. But the device caused complications, including Nonsurgical Implant Could Help Overcome Obesity by Killing Cells Producing Ghrelin,