This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Nutrition/ Malnutrition  • Metabolism  • Alert me on articles by topic

Tracy Hampton, PhD

JAMA. 2007;298:505.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Two new studies have shown that a newly identified "starvation hormone" plays an important role in the metabolic shift seen in animals after a period of fasting and in those fed a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet.

In one study, led by researchers at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, a search for changes in gene activity in mice fed a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet for 30 days turned up the gene encoding liver-derived fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21). The investigators also found that fasting mice and mice on a carbohydrate-restricted diet require increased blood levels of FGF21 to begin burning fat (Badman MK et al. Cell Metab. 2007;5[6]:426-437).

In the second study, scientists at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, in Dallas, and colleagues found that FGF21 mobilizes fat in food-restricted mice and those with chronically elevated concentrations of the hormone (Inagaki T et al. . . . [Full Text of this Article]