Brown Seaweed May Burn Away Fat

By Miranda Hitti
WebMD Medical News Reviewed By Louise Chang, MD
on Monday, September 11, 2006

Sept. 11, 2006 -- The depths of the seas may harbor a compound that
could fizzle fat away.

But don't don your scuba gear just yet. The compound, called
fucoxanthin, isn't ready for prime time.

Fucoxanthin is an antioxidant found in wakame, a type of brown kelp
used in Asian cuisine.

Fucoxanthin burned fat in lab tests on rats and obese mice, prompting
the rodents to lose weight, report Kazuo Miyashita, PhD, and
colleagues.

Their findings were presented today at the American Chemical Society's
232nd national meeting, in San Francisco.

Miyashita is a chemistry professor in the Graduate School of Fisheries
Sciences at Hokkaido University in Hokkaido, Japan.

He and his colleagues didn't try to feed seaweed to rodents. Instead,
the researchers isolated fucoxanthin and added it to the animals' chow.

The fucoxanthin appeared to boost the rodents' production of a protein
involved in fat metabolism, according to the researchers.

Also, levels of the omega-3 fatty acid DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) rose
in the rodent livers when the animals were fed fucoxanthin with soybean
oil.

DHA is one of the omega-3 fatty acids found in fatty fish such as
salmon and has been linked to protective benefits against conditions
like heart disease and depression.

It would be impractical for people to eat enough seaweed to see such a
benefit, Miyashita notes in an American Chemical Society news release.

He says he hopes to develop a pill containing fucoxanthin, adding that
studies in humans may be three to five years away.
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SOURCES: American Chemical Society's 232nd National Meeting &
Exposition, San Francisco, Sept. 10-14, 2006. News release, American
Chemical Society.


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