The immune protein interleukin-6 helps regulate body weight. Blocking it in the brain could restore appetite and muscle mass, a study in mice hints.
People with advanced cancers often feel like their bodies are wasting away. That’s because of cachexia, a condition in which impaired metabolism leads toNature Communications.
Previous research in humans suggested that elevated levels of an immune protein called interleukin-6 may contribute to cachexia. But blocking this protein in the entire body could cause severe side effects, such as irregular heartbeat. So Li and colleagues targeted the protein at the source of the problem.
Li’s team then injected mice with an antibody that gloms onto interleukin-6, preventing the protein from docking on the surface of nerve cells in the area postrema. The researchers also used the gene-editing tool CRISPR to shut down docking stations on the nerve cells. That seemed to reverse the mice’s cachexia, the team reports.
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