| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,700,000)
Fiscal Year 2000: ¥1,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000)
Fiscal Year 1999: ¥2,700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,700,000)
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| Research Abstract |
Administration of capsaicin, the pungent ingredient of red pepper, immediately enhanced adrenal sympathetic activity, stimulated secretion of adrenaline, and increased oxygen consumption, indicated stimulation of heat production. These findings suggest a possibility that functional characteristics of food with capsaicin are related to the prevention and treatment of obesity. In the normal body temperature regulation, heat loss and heat production work in the opposite direction and do not facilitate simultaneously because of the integrative function in the thermoregulatory center. Then, to clarify the discrepancy, heat loss and heat production responses after administration of capsaicin were also investigated simultaneously.
Neurotransmitters such as peptides have proposed to be centrally positioned to affect the integration of afferent and efferent signals regulating the energy balance. During feeding, mammals produce extra heat through non-shivering thermogenesis, at brown adipose tiss
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ue (BAT). The ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH) is involved in the regulation of diet-induced thermogenesis (DIT) in BAT. However, the afferent neural pathway to the VMH and neurotransmitters conveying dietary information from the periphery have remained to be clarified. Calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) is extensively distributed in the central and peripheral nervous systems. The high level presence of CGRP immunoreactivity and binding sites has been observed in hypothalamus, especiallly in the VMH. Intraventricular administration of CGRP promotes thermogenesis. Thus, the possible involvement of CGRP in thermogenesis in the VMH was investigated. Moreover, the peripheral neural mechanism employed for the CGRP-induced heat production was also determined. It is unlikely that the capsaicin-induced activation of heat production is mediated by CGRP in the VMH, because the hypothalamus is not required in the capsaicin-induced heat production (12). Some transmitters other than CGRP may participate in the capsaicin-induced heat production mechanism. The study suggested that the capsaicin- and CGRP-induced heat production could be mediated by the multiple neural circuits in response to sensory information from pain or feeding. Thus, the central neural structures that receive somatosensory and visceral information are functionally related to the autonomic responses such as heat production and therefore are involved in energy homeostasis. Less
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