Obesity Strategies - Worm Treatments - Chickadee Hippocampi - Autism Dating Camp
Breedlove, S
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/genetic-test-predict-weight-loss-drugs
A genetic test may predict which weight loss drugs work best for patients
By Tina Hesman Saey
People trying to lose weight often count calories, carbs, steps and reps and watch the scales. Soon, they may have another number to consider: a genetic score indicating how many calories a person needs to feel full during a meal.
This score may help predict whether someone will lose more weight on the drugs liraglutide or phentermine-topiramate, researchers report June 6 in Cell Metabolism. A separate study, posted to medRXiv.org in November, suggests that individuals with a higher genetic propensity for obesity benefit less from semaglutide compared to those with a lower genetic predisposition.
Such genetic tests may one day help doctors and patients select personalized weight-loss treatments, some researchers say. But the genetic scores “are not perfect predictors of drug response,” says Paul Franks, a genetic epidemiologist at Queen Mary University of London who was not involved in either study. “They show a tendency.”
For the Cell Metabolism study, Mayo Clinic researchers measured how many calories it took for about 700 adults with obesity to feel full when given an all-you-can-eat meal of lasagna, pudding and milk. The calorie intake varied widely, ranging from about 140 to 2,200 calories, with men generally needing more than women. The team used machine learning to compile a genetic score based on variants of 10 genes associated with obesity. That score is designed to reflect the calories people required to feel full.
Then, the Mayo team and colleagues from Phenomix Sciences Inc, headquartered in Menlo Park, Calif., conducted two clinical trials.
In one 16-week trial, people with obesity received either a placebo or liraglutide — a GLP-1 drug branded as Saxenda. GLP-1s are a class of diabetes drugs that have shown promise with weight loss. People with a lower genetic score lost more weight on liraglutide than those with higher genetic scores.
© Society for Science & the Public 2000–2025.
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https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01770-0
How to keep weight off after obesity drugs
Elie Dolgin
Sheree had maintained a healthy weight for 15 years, thanks to a surgery that wrapped a silicone ring around the top of her stomach. But when the gastric band repeatedly slipped and had to be removed, the weight came back — fast. She gained nearly 20 kilograms in just 2 months.
Frustrated, she turned to the latest generation of anti-obesity medications, hoping to slow the rapid weight gain. She cycled through various formulations of the blockbuster therapies semaglutide (sold under the brand names Ozempic and Wegovy) and tirzepatide (sold as Zepbound for weight loss), finding some success with higher doses of these drugs, which mimic the effects of the appetite-suppressing hormone GLP-1. But each time, drug shortages disrupted her treatment, forcing her to start again with a new formulation or to go without the drugs for weeks.
Tired of the uncertainty around the therapies, she decided to try something different. Sheree, who asked that her middle name be used to protect her privacy, underwent two minimally invasive procedures designed to reduce the size of her stomach and to blunt hunger cues.
Developed over the past two decades, these ‘endoscopic’ procedures — performed using flexible tubes inserted through the mouth, and no scalpels — are just one part of a growing toolkit to help people who want to move away from GLP-1 therapy. More-conventional bariatric surgeries, used routinely since the 1980s to reroute the flow of food through the gut or to restrict the stomach’s size, might also gain wider appeal. And the search is picking up for other drugs that could offer lasting alternatives for a post-GLP-1 population.
That momentum is driven by a convergence of factors: chronic shortages of GLP-1 therapies, high costs, insurance barriers and debilitating side effects. As a result, many people who start the drugs ultimately stop — with discontinuation rates in clinical trials ranging from 37% to 81% in the first year1. And once treatment ends, the weight lost often piles back on.
© 2025 Springer Nature Limited
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Worm-inspired treatments inch toward the clinic
By Amber Dance
The experiment was a striking attempt to investigate weight control. For six weeks, a group of mice gorged on lard-enriched mouse chow, then scientists infected the mice with worms. The worms wriggled beneath the animals’ skin, migrated to blood vessels that surround the intestines, and started laying eggs.
Bruno Guigas, a molecular biologist at the Leiden University Center for Infectious Diseases in the Netherlands, led this study some years back and the results, he says, were “quite spectacular.” The mice lost fat and gained less weight overall than mice not exposed to worms. Within a month or so, he recalls, the scientists barely needed their scale to see that the worm-infested mice were leaner than their worm-free counterparts. Infection with worms, it seems, reversed obesity, the researchers reported in 2015.
While it’s true that worms gobble up food their hosts might otherwise digest, that doesn’t seem to be the only mechanism at work here. There’s also some intricate biology within the emerging scientific field of immunometabolism.
Over the past couple of decades, researchers have recognized that the immune system doesn’t just fight infection. It’s also intertwined with organs like the liver, the pancreas and fat tissue, and implicated in the progression of obesity and type 2 diabetes. These and other metabolic disorders generate a troublesome immune response — inflammation — that worsens metabolism still further. Metabolic disease, in other words, is inflammatory disease.
Scientists have also observed a metabolic influence of worms in people who became naturally infected with the parasites or were purposely seeded with worms in clinical trials. While the physiology isn’t fully understood, the worms seem to dampen inflammation, as discussed in the 2024 Annual Review of Nutrition.
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Gazing at a location from afar activates place cells in chickadees
By Marta Hill
Every year, black-capped chickadees perform an impressive game of hide-and-seek. These highly visual birds cache tens of thousands of surplus food morsels and then recover them during leaner times.
Place cells in the hippocampus may help the birds keep track of their hidden bounty, according to a study published 11 June in Nature. The cells activate not only when a bird visits a food stash but also when it looks at the stash from far away, the study shows.
“What is really profound about the work is it’s trying to unpack how it is that we’re able to combine visual information, which is based on where we currently are in the world, with our understanding of the space around us and how we can navigate it,” says Nick Turk-Browne, professor of psychology and director of the Wu Tsai Institute at Yale University, who was not involved in the study.
With each gaze shift, the hippocampus first predicts what the bird is about to see and then reacts to what it actually sees, the study shows.
“It really fits beautifully into this picture of this dual role for the system in representing actual and representing possible,” says Loren Frank, professor of physiology and psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the work.
The findings help explain how the various functions of the hippocampus—navigation, perception, learning and memory—work together, Turk-Browne adds. “If we can have a smart, abstract representation of place that doesn’t depend on actually physically being there, then you can imagine how this can be used to construct memories.”
© 2025 Simons Foundation
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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/12/health/autism-dating-ucla-love-on-the-spectrum.html
The Real-Life Dating Boot Camp That Inspired ‘Love on the Spectrum’
By Ellen Barry
Thirty-six hours after dropping his date off at her apartment, Bradley Goldman was on a video call with his dating coach, breaking down the events of the evening.
Listen to this article with reporter commentary
For one thing, he told the coach, he had chosen the wrong venue for someone on the autism spectrum — a bar of the Sunset Strip hipster variety, so loud and overstimulating that he could almost feel himself beginning to dissociate.
Mr. Goldman, a tall, rangy 42-year-old who works as an office manager, hadn’t decided in advance of the date whether to mention that he had been diagnosed with autism, or that he was working with a coach. So he deflected, and they found themselves, briefly, in a conversational blind alley.
“I struggle with how to disclose,” he said. “Do I say I am ‘neuro-spicy’? Or ‘neurodiverse’? Or do I disclose at all?”
His coach, Disa Jean-Pierre, was sympathetic. “You could just wait for it to come up naturally after a few dates,” she suggested.
Mr. Goldman thought this over. “I’m still figuring this out,” he said.
Nevertheless, it was a solidly enjoyable date, something he credited to the coaching he had received from a team of psychologists at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles.
He had avoided “info dumping” or making too many Jeffrey Dahmer jokes, and he had carefully observed his date’s body language to detect whether she was signaling openness to a good night kiss. (She was.)
“She was like, ‘I really want you to let me know you got home,’” he said. “So, that © 2025 The New York Times Company
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