Gandhinagar, March 4: Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel announced on Tuesday that the state government will launch a statewide awareness campaign against obesity. The initiative aims to educate people on the risks associated with obesity and ways to adopt a healthier lifestyle.

The announcement was made in the Gujarat Assembly during the ongoing budget session, coinciding with World Obesity Day on March 4. The Chief Minister emphasized that the campaign will run throughout the year, featuring various programs to promote awareness about weight management and healthy living.

Patel highlighted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a recent episode of his radio program ‘Mann Ki Baat’, urged people to take obesity seriously and work towards spreading awareness about its health implications. The Chief Minister stated that Gujarat has always responded promptly to the Prime Minister’s appeals, and this campaign is a step in that direction.

The state government plans to implement year-round initiatives aimed at educating the public on effective ways to combat obesity, promoting healthy eating habits, physical fitness, and lifestyle changes across Gujarat.

New York, Jan 3 (IANS) An Indian-origin engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed a new vibrating and ingestible capsule that could create a sense of fullness, tricking the brain into thinking it's time to stop eating, and one day help treat obesity.

The ingestible capsule vibrates within the stomach, which activates the same stretch receptors that sense when the stomach is distended, creating an illusory sense of fullness.

In animals who were given this pill 20 minutes before eating, the researchers found that this treatment not only stimulated the release of hormones that signal satiety, but also reduced the animals' food intake by about 40 per cent.

"For somebody who wants to lose weight or control their appetite, it could be taken before each meal," said lead author Shriya Srinivasan, a former MIT graduate student and postdoc student.

"This could be really interesting in that it would provide an option that could minimise the side effects that we see with the other pharmacological treatments out there," added Srinivasan, now an assistant professor of bioengineering at Harvard University.

In the paper, published in the journal Science Advances, Srinivasan explained that when the stomach becomes distended, specialised cells called mechanoreceptors sense that stretching and send signals to the brain via the vagus nerve. As a result, the brain stimulates production of insulin, as well as hormones such as C-peptide, Pyy, and GLP-1.

All of these hormones work together to help people digest their food, feel full, and stop eating. At the same time, levels of ghrelin, a hunger-promoting hormone, go down.

"I wondered if we could activate stretch receptors in the stomach by vibrating them and having them perceive that the entire stomach has been expanded, to create an illusory sense of distension that could modulate hormones and eating patterns," Srinivasan said.

Her team designed a capsule about the size of a multivitamin that includes a vibrating element. When the pill, which is powered by a small silver oxide battery, reaches the stomach, acidic gastric fluids dissolve a gelatinous membrane that covers the capsule, completing the electronic circuit that activates the vibrating motor.

In a study in animals, the researchers showed that once the pill begins vibrating, it activates mechanoreceptors, which send signals to the brain through stimulation of the vagus nerve.

The researchers tracked hormone levels during the periods when the device was vibrating and found that they mirrored the hormone release patterns seen following a meal, even when the animals had fasted.

The pill not only reduced the animals’ appetite by 40 per cent, it also helped animals gain weight more slowly during periods when they were treated with the vibrating pill.

The study also found that the animals did not show any signs of obstruction, perforation, or other negative impacts while the pill was in their digestive tract.

Compared to the drugs such as GLP-1 agonists that are costly and have to be injected, Srinivasan said the MIT capsules could be manufactured at a cost that would make them available to people who don't have access to more expensive treatment options.

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London - Individuals who are obese may be more susceptible to severe Covid-19 because of a poorer inflammatory immune response, which can affect the body's ability to fight infections, according to scientists.

Scientists at the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease (CITIID) and Wellcome Sanger Institute showed that following SARS-CoV-2 infection, cells in the lining of the lungs, nasal cells, and immune cells in the blood show a blunted inflammatory response in obese patients, producing suboptimal levels of molecules needed to fight the infection.

Studies have shown that people who are obese already have higher levels of key molecules associated with inflammation in their blood. Thus it was earlier speculated whether an overactive inflammatory response explains the connection between severe Covid-19 and obesity.

But scientists found it to be the "absolute opposite". They found that obese patients had underactive immune and inflammatory responses in their lungs.

To understand, the researchers analysed blood and lung samples taken from 13 obese patients with severe Covid requiring mechanical ventilation and intensive care treatment, and 20 controls (non-obese Covid-19 patients and ventilated non-Covid-19 patients).

Compared to non-obese patients, they found that cells in the lining of their lungs and some of their immune cells had lower levels of activity among genes responsible for the production of two molecules known as interferons (INF) -- interferon-alpha and interferon-gamma -- which help control the response of the immune system, and of tumour necrosis factor (TNF), which causes inflammation.

When they looked at immune cells in the blood of 42 adults from an independent cohort, they found a similar, but less marked, reduction in the activity of interferon-producing genes as well as lower levels of IFN-alpha in the blood, the researchers said in the paper published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

"This was really surprising and unexpected. Across every cell type we looked at, we found that the genes responsible for the classical antiviral response were less active. They were completely muted," said Professor Menna Clatworthy, a clinician scientist at the University of Cambridge.

The team was able to replicate its findings in nasal immune cells taken from obese children with Covid, where they again found lower levels of activity among the genes that produce IFN-alpha and IFN-gamma. This is important because the nose is one of the entry points for the virus -- a robust immune response there could prevent the infection spreading further into the body, while a poorer response would be less effective, Clatworthy said.

The findings could have important implications both for the treatment of Covid-19 and in the design of clinical trials to test new treatments.

(IANS)