Genetic and pharmacological studies have shown that the melanocortin-4 receptor (MC4R) is an important regulator of food intake and energy homeostasis. Consistent with these studies, several mutations of the MC4R gene have been identified as being associated with early-onset severe obesity. We report here the first in-frame deletion mutation of the MC4R gene (delta88-92) in an obese female patient with onset of obesity at less than 5 yr of age. Functional analysis revealed that the mutant receptor is expressed well on the cell surface but completely devoid of ligand binding and cAMP generation in response to agonist stimulation. We conclude that this novel mutation is the cause of obesity of this patient.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1210/jc.2003-030903 | DOI Listing |
Curr Obes Rep
January 2025
Section on Growth and Obesity, Division of Intramural Research, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.
Purpose Of Review: Hyperphagia is a condition associated with rare obesity-related diseases, presenting as a pathologic, insatiable hunger accompanied by abnormal food-seeking behaviors. In October 2023, a group of researchers and clinicians with expert knowledge on hyperphagia convened at the annual ObesityWeek meeting to discuss the need for a unified definition of hyperphagia and key items necessary to improve the identification, assessment, and treatment of hyperphagia in patients with melanocortin 4 receptor (MC4R) pathway-associated diseases.
Recent Findings: The definition of hyperphagia proposed by this group is a pathologic, insatiable hunger accompanied by abnormal food-seeking behaviors.
BMC Med Genomics
January 2025
Department of Community Nutrition, School of Nutritional Sciences and Dietetics, Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS), Tehran, Iran.
Background: The growth in obesity and rates of abdominal obesity in developing countries is due to the dietary transition, meaning a shift from traditional, fiber-rich diets to Westernized diets high in processed foods, sugars, and unhealthy fats. Environmental changes, such as improving the quality of dietary fat consumed, may be useful in preventing or mitigating the obesity or unhealthy obesity phenotype in individuals with a genetic predisposition, although this has not yet been confirmed. Therefore, in this study, we investigated how dietary fat quality indices with metabolically healthy obesity (MHO) or metabolically unhealthy obesity (MUO) based on the Karelis criterion interact with genetic susceptibility in Iranian female adults.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Med Chem
January 2025
Department of Medicinal Chemistry and the Institute for Translational Neuroscience, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, United States.
The melanocortin receptors are a class of centrally and peripherally expressed G protein-coupled receptors, of which the MC3R and MC4R subtypes are implicated in the regulation of appetite and energy homeostasis and can serve as potential therapeutic targets for disorders such as obesity and cachexia. An unbiased high-throughput mixture-based library screen was implemented to identify novel ligands with an emphasis on the identification of nanomolar-potent agonists of the mouse melanocortin-3 receptor. This screen yielded the discovery of an N-branched tricyclic guanidine scaffold (TPI2408) that contained three nanomolar potent mMC3R agonists and additional compounds that possessed antagonism for the mMC4R.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClin Nutr
December 2024
Department of Cellular - Molecular Nutrition, School of Nutrition Sciences and Dietetics, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. Electronic address:
Introduction: Obesity is a multifactorial disease caused by an interaction between genetic, environmental and behavioral factors. Polymorphisms of the two genes Circadian Locomotor Output Cycles Kaput (CLOCK) rs1801260 and Melanocortin-4-receptor (MC4R) rs17782313, are associated with obesity. Knowledge is limited on the interaction between CLOCK, MC4R and obesity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Transl Med
January 2025
Hypothalamic Research Center, Department of Internal Medicine, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas TX, 75390, USA.
Disruption of hypothalamic melanocortin 4 receptors (MC4Rs) causes obesity in mice and humans. Here, we investigated the transcriptional regulation of in the hypothalamus. In mice, we show that the homeodomain transcription factor Orthopedia (OTP) is enriched in MC4R neurons in the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) of the hypothalamus and directly regulates transcription.
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