| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,400,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,400,000)
Fiscal Year 2006: ¥1,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,200,000)
Fiscal Year 2005: ¥2,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,200,000)
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| Research Abstract |
In women facing menopause, end of menstrual activity is accompanied by lower levels of estrogen and gradual weight gain. Postmenopausal weight gain sounds an alarm for women's health and may leads hyperlipidemia, a lipid increase, and glucose intolerance. These phenomena are connected to life-style-related diseases such as hypertension, type II diabetes mellitus, arteriosclerosis and metabolic syndrome, making it essential to prevent weight gain in women. A Kampo medicine, Boi-ogi-to, is traditionally used to treat obese conditions, but the mechanism has not yet been investigated. In this experiment, we tested the anti-obesity properties of Boiogito in ovariectomized rats by measuring changes of serum cytokine levels and adipocytokines in fat cells. After treatment of this extract for 6 weeks (20-week-old rats), we found that there was a significant weight decrease in rats treated with Boi-ogi-to as compared with that in the control group. Serum tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α levels increased significantly in a dose-dependent manner. Gene expression of adipose tissue in uterus also dose-dependently showed a significant increase of TNF-α levels, suggesting that secretion of TNF-α by fat cells might play a role in ability of Boi-ogi-to to inhibit weight gain. While peroxisome proliferators-activated receptor-γ and adiponectin levels did not show a significant difference as compared with those in the control, levels of mRNA expression showed a tendency to increase dose-dependently. Resistin did not show any significant change. These results suggest that Boi-ogi-to might be useful for the prevention of obesity that occurs in women with reduction of estrogen.
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