Xuanming Guo, Pallavi Asthana, Lixiang Zhai, Ka Wing Cheng, Susma Gurung, Jiangang Huang, Jiayan Wu, Yijing Zhang, Arun Kumar Mahato, Mart Saarma, Mart Ustav, Hiu Yee Kwan, Aiping Lyu, Kui Ming Chan, Pingyi Xu, Zhao-Xiang Bian, Hoi Leong Xavier Wong
Obesity, a global health challenge, is a major risk factor for multiple life-threatening diseases, including diabetes, fatty liver, and cancer. There is an ongoing need to identify safe and tolerable therapeutics for obesity management. Herein, we show that treatment with artesunate, an artemisinin derivative approved by the FDA for the treatment of severe malaria, effectively reduces body weight and improves metabolic profiles in preclinical models of obesity, including male mice with overnutrition-induced obesity and male cynomolgus macaques with spontaneous obesity, without inducing nausea and malaise...
February 3, 2024: Nature Communications