Endocrine Abstracts

Despite numerous educational interventions and medical efforts efforts, modern society continues to suffer from obesity and its associated metabolic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes mellitus, and these diseases show little sign of abating. The brain, and in particular the hypothalamus, continues to gain attention as an important central target for the treatment of metabolic disease. However, most of the pharmaceutical approaches directly targeting the brain largely have failed, this might be due to an incomplete understanding of hypothalamic function in control of energy metabolism. Recent studies on obesity-induced pathophysiology discovered hypothalamic inflammation-like processes that involve complex alterations of multiple physiological and cellular parameters. Hypothalamic inflammatory-like processes observed in models of diet induced metabolic diseases not only influence neurons but also glial population, the vasculature, neuronal organelles and synapses, as well as the hypothalamic ability to sense nutrients, cytokines, and hormones. A more detailed understanding of the complex interactions between cellular and intracellular players involved in diet induced hypothalamic inflammation-like processes may hold opportunities for novel ways to effectively target obesity, diabetes and their comorbidities.