Israel, whose population of 7.8 million is similar in size to Switzerland’s, has about 60 companies traded on the Nasdaq, the most of any country outside the U.S. after China. The nation is also home to the largest number of startup companies per capita in the world.

By Tal Barak Harif – Jan 25, 2012, Bloomberg

BioLineRx Ltd. (.BLRXARB) surged in New York trading, widening the premium versus its Tel Aviv shares to a record, on bets the biopharmaceutical company will be acquired following its licensing agreement for a hepatitis C treatment.

BioLineRx’s American depositary receipts jumped 69 percent on the Nasdaq Stock Market yesterday, swelling the premium to the Israeli stock to 28 percent. The Tel Aviv shares soared 25 percent at 10:28 a.m. in Tel Aviv today. The Bloomberg Israel-US 25 Index (ISRA25BN) of the largest Israeli companies traded in New York rose 0.1 percent to 92.53. Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (CHKP) led gains after Topeka Capital Markets Inc. recommended buying shares of the maker of network security equipment.

BioLineRx’s agreement with French company Genoscience to develop and sell a hepatitis C pill treatment boosts the odds that the Jerusalem-based company will be bought, according to Morgan Joseph TriArtisan Group. Bristol-Myers (BMY) Squibb Co. and Gilead Sciences Inc. (GILD) announced $13.3 billion of acquisitions in the past two months to buy developers of hepatitis treatments.

“The fact that BioLineRx now has a highly novel hepatitis C drug in its armory should make the company an appealing target for strategic partners,” Raghuram Selvaraju, a New York-based equity analyst at Morgan Joseph TriArtisan, said by e-mail yesterday. “The hepatitis C viral infection space is an area that has been particularly hot recently.”

The Bloomberg Israel-US 25 Index has gained 10 percent this year, outperforming the Nasdaq Composite Index’s (CCMP) 7 percent advance and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index’s 4.5 percent increase. A 14 percent jump in Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (TEVA), the world’s largest maker of generic drugs, has helped pushed the Israel-US 25 higher. The TA-25 stock index rose 0.3 percent to 1,126.06 today.

BioLineRx ‘Euphoria’

Bristol-Myers, a biopharmaceutical company based in New York, said on Jan. 7 it would pay about $2.5 billion in cash to buy Inhibitex Inc. (INHX), which is developing an oral drug called INX-189 for treating hepatitis C. Pharmasset Inc. (VRUS), based in Princeton, New Jersey, agreed to be acquired by Gilead Sciences for $10.8 billion in a deal announced on Nov. 21.

Gilead, the world’s largest maker of HIV drugs, offered the highest premium on record for a drug takeover of comparable size, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

As many as 170 million people worldwide carry the hepatitis C virus, a blood-borne disease that can lead to liver cirrhosis and cancer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The market for medicines to treat the disease is about $3 billion worldwide, said Andrew Berens, a senior health-care analyst with Bloomberg Industries.

“The euphoria you’re seeing is mostly related to the fact that the announcement makes the company an acquisition target,” Berens said in a phone interview from Skillman, New Jersey. “An oral drug is what everyone is trying to develop because the current injection treatments are toxic and cumbersome.”

Volumes Surge

BioLineRx’s ADRs rose to $5.55 yesterday after the shares in Tel Aviv climbed 37 percent to 1.65 shekels, or the equivalent of 44 cents. One ADR represents 10 shares. The Tel Aviv shares rose to 2.06 shekels, or 55 cents, today.

Phone messages and e-mails sent to Garth Russell, a spokesman for BioLineRx from an external public-relations company, seeking comments on a potential buyout weren’t returned.

Trading volumes on the stock soared yesterday, with more than 6 million BioLineRx ADRs exchanging hands, compared with an average of 7,000 trades a day, according to Bank of New York Mellon Corp.

The Israeli biopharmaceutical company, whose largest shareholder is Teva (BLRX), listed the ADRs on the Nasdaq Stock Market on July 25.

Israel, whose population of 7.8 million is similar in size to Switzerland’s, has about 60 companies traded on the Nasdaq, the most of any country outside the U.S. after China. The nation is also home to the largest number of startup companies per capita in the world.

Venture Capital

Israeli technology companies raised $2.14 billion in 2011, 70 percent more than in 2010, according to the IVC-KPMG Quarterly Survey e-mailed yesterday.

Check Point, the world’s second-largest maker of network security equipment, climbed 1.2 percent to $56.52 in New York, the highest closing price since Nov. 16.

Shares will probably gain 38 percent to $78 in the next 12 months, Frederick Ziegel, an analyst at Topeka Capital Markets, wrote in an e-mailed report yesterday where he rated the company a “buy” in initial coverage.

EZchip Semiconductor Ltd. (EZCH), a maker of network processors that counts U.S. Internet infrastructure company Juniper Networks Inc. (JNPR) as a customer, gained 3.5 percent to $34.02, swelling the premium versus its Tel Aviv shares to $1.48, the widest among the dually-listed companies. EZchip climbed 5.4 percent to 129.60 shekels, or $34.32, today.

Bottomed Out

The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX), which investors use to track chip industry performance, added 0.4 percent yesterday, extending this year’s gain to 14 percent.

Texas Instruments Inc. (TXN), the world’s largest maker of analog chips, said on Jan. 24 that fourth-quarter sales and profit declined less than analysts had predicted, signaling to brokerage Benchmark Co. that the market for electronic components has bottomed out.

“The chipmakers group seems to be on an upper inflection point,” Gary Mobley, an analyst at Benchmark, said by phone from New York yesterday. “Companies are talking about an end of inventory depletion and see increases in bookings.”

Perrigo Co. (PRGO), the largest U.S. maker of generic over-the- counter drugs, fell 2.1 percent in the U.S. to $97.54 yesterday after its shares in Tel Aviv gained 0.3 percent to 373.50 shekels, or the equivalent of $98.65. The $1.11 discount was the biggest among dually-listed companies. The Tel Aviv shares dropped 0.8 percent to 370.50 shekels, or $98.12, today.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tal Barak Harif in New York at tbarak@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Emma O’Brien at eobrien6@bloomberg.net

Ancient Chinese medicine is known to ease pain and treat diseases, but Israeli researchers now think it can help barren women.

Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, Arutz Sheva, January 16, 2012

Ancient Chinese medicine is known to ease pain, treat diseases and boost fertility for women who already have babies, but Israeli researchers at Tel Aviv University now think it can help women who have never conceived.

Traditional herbal preparations and acupuncture, remedies that the Western medical community calls by the acronym TCM, can be combined with intrauterine insemination (IUI) for women hoping to be mothers, according to Dr. Shahar Lev-Ari and Keren Sela.

Their research, published in the Journal of Integrative Medicine, shows a significant increase in fertility when the therapies are administered side-by-side.

When combining IUI with TCM treatments, 65.5 percent of the test group of 29 women were able to conceive, compared with 39.4 percent of the control group, who received no herbal or acupuncture therapy. About two-thirds of the women who conceived in each group ended up delivering healthy babies.

The method is as “close to nature” as possible and can be used by women employing sperm donors, or after a partner’s sperm is centrifuged to enhance its motility in the uterus.

Dr. Lev-Ari, a cellular biologist, and Sela, a TCM practitioner specializing in women’s health, followed the progress of 29 women between the ages of 30 and 45 who were receiving IUI treatment combined with TCM therapy, and compared their results to a control group of 94 women between the ages of 28 and 46 who were undergoing IUI treatment alone.

In addition to their IUI treatments, the 29 women in the first group received weekly sessions of acupuncture and a regime of Chinese medicines, which consisted of powdered or raw Chinese herbs such as Peonia Albae and Chuanxiong, designed to meet each woman’s specific needs. All herbal preparations were approved by the Israeli Health Ministry.

The vast difference in success rates is even more surprising when the age of the average participant was taken into account, Dr. Lev-Ari and Sela note. “The average age of the women in the study group was 39.4, while that of the control group was 37.1. Normally, the older the mother, the lower the pregnancy and delivery rates,” they explain.

www.israelnationalnews.com

Reprinted from WaterWorld

BE’ER SHEVA, ISRAEL, Jan. 10, 2012 – Israel still remains one the world leaders in wastewater recycling and a collaboration between local farmers has demonstrated why the country will continue to lead with this application.

A co-operation of 34 farming settlements recently pooled their resources together to construct an effluent reuse system next to a wastewater treatment plant. Previously, the quality of reclaimed water from the facility was not suitable for “unlimited irrigation” purposes.

A MODOtec filtration system, including downstream Ultraviolet Technology treatment, with a capacity of 60,000 m³/day, was selected. A total of 90% of the produced effluent will be piped for agricultural irrigation and the remaining 10% used for irrigation of Be’er Sheva’s municipal parks.

Wastewater effluent reuse is becoming a common strategy in the region, especially for agricultural irrigation purposes, which have exhausted many groundwater supplies in the region.

Since 2000, the use of treated wastewater for irrigation by Israel’s agricultural sector increased from 17% of water consumed by the sector to more than 50%. Regulation has been a key driver, with stringent regulations to upgrade effluent standards set in motion in 2000 by Israel’s parliament.

In January 2010, the government approved regulations that would upgrade the 1992 minimal standard of 20 ppm biological oxygen demand (BOD) and 30 ppm total suspended solids (TSS) to 10 ppm BOD and 10 ppm TSS.

Estimates from the World Bank show that currently more than 40 million m³ of municipal wastewater is recycled daily and is expected to increase to approximately 55 million m³ by 2015.

Growth is likely to be centred around the Middle East region, which lacks natural sustainable potable water supplies and relies upon desalination for its drinking water needs.

Oman is playing host to a large scale water reuse project that will see thousands of kilometers of pipeline laid to connect homes to a new network. Haya Water’s project aims to connect over 30,000 homes, office and commercial buildings to the water reuse network. This will be supplied by a 80,000 m³ capacity wastewater treatment plant, using Membrane Bioreactor technology (MBR).

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- WaterWorld Middle East conference and exhibition will be launching in Qatar on February 6-8 2012 and will include conference sessions on Water Reuse and the use of MBR technology. For more information please click here.

Latest Articles

Wastewater reuse relieves agricultural irrigation drought in Israel (Jan 10, 2012)

By WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS
January 9, 2012

Researchers have identified a gene that is required for proper development of the mouse inner ear.

Providing clues to deafness, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a gene that is required for proper development of the mouse inner ear.
In humans, this gene, known as FGF20, is located in a portion of the genome that has been associated with inherited deafness in otherwise healthy families.
“When we inactivated FGF20 in mice, we saw they were alive and healthy,” says senior author David M. Ornitz, MD, PhD, the Alumni Endowed Professor of Developmental Biology. “But then we figured out that they had absolutely no ability to hear.”
The results, published online Jan. 3 in PLoS Biology, show that disabling the gene causes a loss of outer hair cells, a special type of sensory cell in the inner ear responsible for amplifying sound. While about two-thirds of the outer hair cells were missing in mice without FGF20, the number of inner hair cells, the cells responsible for transmitting the amplified signals to the brain, appeared normal.

“This is the first evidence that inner and outer hair cells develop independently of one another,” says first author Sung-Ho Huh, PhD, postdoctoral research associate. “This is important because most age-related and noise-induced hearing loss is due to the loss of outer hair cells.”
As such, Ornitz and Huh speculate that FGF20 signaling will be a required step toward the goal of regenerating outer hair cells in mammals, the only vertebrates incapable of such feats of hearing restoration.
“Birds and, in fact, all vertebrates other than mammals have the ability to regenerate hair cells,” says co-author Mark E. Warchol, PhD, professor of otolaryngology. “Understanding how mammals differ from the rest is a topic of great interest.”
The FGF20 gene codes for one member of a family of proteins known as fibroblast growth factors. In general, members of this family are known to play important and broad roles in embryonic development, tissue maintenance and wound healing.
Beyond a simple on and off switch, Ornitz and his colleagues found that FGF20 signaling (or its chemical equivalent, FGF9) must occur on or before day 14 of the embryo’s development to produce a normal inner ear. Even if FGF20 or FGF9 signaling occurred on day 15 or later, the inner ear still did not develop properly.
“In mice, the precursor cells that can become outer hair cells must be exposed to the FGF20 protein at an early stage,” Ornitz says. “After embryonic day 14, it doesn’t matter if they see the protein. It’s too late for them to become outer hair cells.”
This critical time point does not exist in other vertebrates that retain the ability to form new hair cells throughout their lives. Whether FGF20 plays a role in this regeneration remains an open question.
“We’re literally doing those experiments right now,” Warchol says. “But FGF20 has been shown to be involved in other kinds of regeneration like the regrowth of zebrafish fins.”
Ornitz and his colleagues also see evidence that mutations in FGF20 may play a role in human deafness. A genetic region known as DFNB71 has been associated with congenital deafness in a few human families.
“And FGF20 is right smack in the center of that region,” Ornitz says. “Based on our work, we are predicting that these families will have some sort of mutation in the FGF20 gene. It hasn’t been found yet, but a group at the Baylor College of Medicine is sequencing this region of the genome to look for FGF20 gene mutations.”

By Elizabeth Flock, Washington Post, January 6, 2012

Physicist, cosmologist and obsessor of black holes Stephen Hawking turns 70 Sunday, despite a diagnosis of Lou Gehrig’s disease that doctors said would kill him almost five decades ago. Many scientists are taking the birthday as a chance to reflect on what the man taught us in his brilliant career.

Stephen Hawking. (MARKUS SCHREIBER – AP)

As a professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge, Hawking taught countless students about cosmology, gravitation and complex mathematics. As the author of “A Brief History of Time,” he instructed readers on the Big Bang, black holes and other mysteries of the universe. And despite losing his ability to speak, he continues to teach disbelieving doctors that people can live past their life expectancy if they try.

Below, six other lessons Hawking has taught us in his 70 years:

1. We will never have all the answers.

At the end of a lecture in the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington, England, in 2010, Hawking was asked: “Do you think it will come the time that people will learn everything about physics?” The scientist quickly responded: “I hope not!” And when a reader of Time magazine that same year asked him whether it felt like a huge responsibility to have all the answers, Hawking wrote back: “While physics and mathematics may tell us how the universe began, they are not much use in predicting human behavior because there are far too many equations to solve. I’m no better than anyone else at understanding what makes people tick.”

2. Knowledge is best put to use when shared.

Despite its difficult subject matter, Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” has been read by legions of people because the physicist made it so accessible. A popular story goes that Hawking’s publisher told him readership would be cut in half for every equation in the book, so Hawking included only one: E = mc².

“The fact is that information in his mind would be useless to anyone else if he wasn’t able, somehow, to communicate it effectively,” Science blogger Mic Farris writes.

3. Learn the lessons of history.

Hawking fielded questions from the BBC this week on what might happen if humans discover other intelligent life. Hawking’s response: Know your history. “The discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe would be the biggest scientific discovery ever,” he said. “But it would be very risky to attempt to communicate with an alien civilization. If aliens decided to visit us then the outcome might be similar to when Europeans arrived in the Americas. That did not turn out well for the Native Americans.”

5. Study what fuels your passion.

When the Washington Post interviewed Errol Morris, director of the film adaptation of “A Brief History of Time,” in 1992, Morris explained why he believed Hawking was so fascinated with the study of black holes: “To me, it’s like some real-life Edgar Allan Poe story, a version of the premature burial — being essentially buried alive inside of one’s self. . . . When he was 21 years old, he was given a death sentence with 2 ¹ / ₂ years to live, and in the nearly 30 years since then, he has become increasingly incapacitated. And what is the central objective of his inquiries? Black holes. Stars that collapse in on themselves, implode, become so incredibly dense that nothing can escape their gravitation field . . . To me, there’s a very close metaphorical connection.”

5. Never lose your voice.

Because of his motor neuron disease, Hawking had to undergo a tracheotomy in 1985 that removed his ability to speak on his own. But he never stopped talking. Like movie critic Roger Ebert or the protagonist of “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” Hawking adopted his own way of speaking — by using a computer that picks up the twitching movements of his right cheek.

6. Genius shouldn’t always be associated with precocity.

Hawking admitted in the same Royal Albert Hall lecture that he did not learn to read until he was 8 years old. He also said he was a lazy student at Oxford University, his classwork untidy and his handwriting the “despair of my teachers.” Late bloomers, take heart.

By Elizabeth Flock  |  12:41 PM ET, 01/06/2012
Tags:  National, Stephen Hawking

First Posted: 1/5/12 , Huffington Post 

We here at HuffPost High School knew it all along (not to brag, or anything), but now there’s the research to back it up — a new study by the American Psychological Association recently found that blogging may have psychological benefits for teens.

The study, which surveyed 161 high school students in Israel, examined the teens’ self-esteem levels and daily social activities and behaviors after a 10-week blogging experiment. The researchers found that the teens who blogged — as compared to those who did nothing or kept a private diary — displayed greater improvements in self-esteem, social ease, and emotional well-being. The bloggers who wrote specifically about their social difficulties and those whose posts were open to comments showed the most improvement.

Although research on teens and social media usage have shown mixed results for the effect of social networking on well-being, with blogging, the generally encouraging comments on the blog posts may be a contributing factor in the teen bloggers’ lessened social anxiety and increased well-being.

The study’s co-author said, “Although cyberbullying and online abuse are extensive and broad, we noted that almost all responses to our participants’ blog messages were supportive and positive in nature… We weren’t surprised, as we frequently see positive social expressions online in terms of generosity, support and advice.”

Do you think blogging is good for teens? Have you found that comments on personal blog posts are generally positive? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Posted by QualityStocks on Dec 06, 2011

BioLineRx Ltd. (Nasdaq: BLRX) is a biopharmaceutical development company dedicated to building a portfolio of products for addressing unmet medical needs or that have advantages over currently available therapies. The company’s current product portfolio consists of five clinical stage candidates, including BL-1021, an orally available small molecule for neuropathic pain.

The company announced today the final results of the Phase 1a study of BL-1021. In this study, it was demonstrated that a single administration of BL-1021 in the dose range examined was safe and well tolerated. There were no significant changes noted in vital signs, ECG or laboratory safety parameters at any dose when compared either to baseline measurements or to the placebo group. In addition, the drug demonstrated the potential for once daily oral administration.

The trial was a double-blind, placebo-controlled study performed at the Hadassah Clinical Research Center in Jerusalem, Israel, led by principal investigator Professor Yosef Caraco. The study’s goal was to assess the safety, tolerability and pharmacokinetics of a single administration of BL-1021 (between 10 mg and 80 mg) in healthy male subjects.

The CEO of BioLineRx, Dr. Kinneret Savitsky, commented on the trial results, “We are very encouraged by these results, Which indicate that BL-1021 has potential as an effective treatment for neuropathic pain with minimal side effects and requiring only once daily dosing.”

For additional information about BioLineRx and its portfolio of potential drug candidates, please visit the company’s website at www.biolinerx.com

Article written by QualityStocks — Visit www.QualityStocks.net for more emerging growth companies to discover and evaluate.

Read more: http://www.beaconequity.com/biolinerx-ltd-blrx-announces-positive-final-results-for-its-neuropathic-pain-drug-2011-12-06/#ixzz1fr0UuYFT

Study: Autistic Children Have More Brain Cells

By Alice Park Wednesday, November 9, 2011

There’s growing evidence that the brains of autistic children are very different from the brains of other youngsters. Now a new study that found an excess of brain cells in children with autism comes closer to pinpointing the origins of the condition: in utero versus in toddlerhood.

In research reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), scientists at the University of California, San Diego, found that autistic children have about 67% more nerve cells in a part of the brain known as the prefrontal cortex than children without autism. The prefrontal cortex is involved in processing social skills, communication, cognitive functions and language — all areas in which autistic children often show abnormal development.

Lead researcher Eric Courchesne studied the brains of seven autistic boys between the ages of 2 and 16 after their death and compared his analysis to the brains of six unaffected boys who died at similar ages. The excess of neurons was a bit of a surprise since in most cases, deficits in social skills — like the ones autistic children typically have — are linked to less, not more, nerve tissue.

“When we think of the inability to handle complicated information, we usually think of too little in the way of connections or brain cells,” he says. “But this is just the opposite.”

MORE: Risk of Autism Is Five Times Higher in Low-Birthweight Babies

Functionally, however, the autistic children may have been suffering from a dearth of proper nerve connections since the overabundance of neurons may have led to difficulty in their ability to connect and communicate with each other. That situation, says Courchesne, could "lead to pathways that slow down or prevent normal active interaction between different regions of the brain.”

Social interaction and communication, for example, require that nerves from distant portions of the brain link up. Think of too many nerves like an overgrown forest that could choke some of these critical neural bridges.

Equally significant is the fact that the excess of neurons in the prefrontal cortex aren’t formed after birth, but during early development, in utero. That suggests that the changes responsible for autism are occurring much earlier than scientists had thought.

MORE: Could the Way We Mate and Marry Boost Rates of Autism?

“Knowing that we have a specific type of defect that occurs very early in development really helps us to focus and sharpen the next steps in research to determine what caused the excess,” says Courchesne. And hopefully find new treatments that can help children and their families cope better with the symptoms of autism.

Find this article at:
http://healthland.time.com/2011/11/09/study-autistic-children-have-too-many-brain-neurons/

© 2011 Time Inc. All rights reserved

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/11/09/study-autistic-children-have-too-many-brain-neurons/print/#ixzz1dDWRdOxS

By Karin Kloosterman
November 06, 2011

Israeli company formulates a drug that ‘trains’ the immune system to seek and destroy malignant cells that have already invaded the body.

Cancer cells.

As we get older, modern medicine will help more of us live with cancer rather than die from it. That’s the assumption behind a vaccine to treat cancer, being developed by a pharmaceutical company in Israel.

Vaxil BioTherapeutics’ main product, ImMucin, is now in advanced clinical trials at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem.

CEO Julian Levy tells ISRAEL21c that this therapeutic vaccine doesn’t prevent cancer from invading, but activates and enhances the body’s natural immune system to seek and destroy cancer cells already present in the body, such as those lingering after cancer surgery.

Malignant cells normally get out of control by tricking the immune system not to notice them, a strategy that works especially well in older people because immune systems get less efficient with age.

The vaccine is currently being tested against a blood cancer called multiple myeloma. However, Vaxil’s scientific breakthrough is based on a drug platform, VaxHit, which can be tailored to treat not only 90 percent of cancers, he says, but also diseases such as tuberculosis.

This disease is cropping up in developing nations as existing vaccines are proving less and less effective.

"Two billion are affected by the pathogen," says Levy. "Ten percent will develop the active disease. And while TB can be treated by drugs, it takes several months and it can be brutal."

Julian Levy, CEO of Vaxil BioTherapeutics.

According to Levy, the vaccine presents no side effects, and can be taken indefinitely, like vitamins. ImMucin is designed to overcome cancer cells that mutate, rendering other drugs ineffective.

A hit for long-term survival

Depending on the outcome of clinical trials, the ImMucin vaccine could be ready and marketable within the next six years. It could have major implications for the treatment of leading killers like prostate and breast cancer.

New studies in the United States suggest that fewer men will go under the scalpel to remove their cancerous prostate gland, and simply live with the usually slow-growing cancer. Vaxil could be a helpful tool in prolonging lives of these patients.

The specific molecular markers on most cancer cells, which ImMucin "trains" the immune system’s T-cells to find and kill, were discovered by the company’s founder, Dr. Lior Carmon, a biotechnology entrepreneur with a doctorate in immunology from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot.

Vaxil was founded in 2006, and the company of five is currently based in Nes Ziona, Israel. This year, Vaxil signed a memorandum of understanding to merge its business into Sheldonco, an Israeli company traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

Study Suggests Hormones May Be Responsible for Failure to Keep Off Lost Pounds

By Denise Mann
WebMD Health News

Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD

Oct. 26, 2011 — Just ask anyone who has ever tried to shed extra pounds: Losing weight can be hard, but it’s keeping this extra weight off that is often most daunting.

Now new research in the New England Journal of Medicine sheds some light on why, and the answer is not lack of willpower. It seems that our hormones — at least those involved in appetite regulation — may be setting us up to fail.

In a new study, 50 overweight or obese people went on a low-calorie diet for 10 weeks. Researchers measured levels of several key hormones involved in appetite control before they started the diet, after they completed the diet, and then again 62 weeks later.

They found that changes in the hormonal mix tip the scale toward hunger and weight regain. Up to a year after weight loss, there are increases in the "hunger hormone" ghrelin and reductions in other hormones such as leptin that could promote weight gain.

Hormones and Eating

Gherlin is the "go" hormone that tells us to eat. Leptin is the hormone that tells us to stop eating. More ghrelin and less leptin set the stage for weight regain. Reductions in other hormones such as peptide YY and cholecystokinin also help favor weight regain after weight loss.

From an evolutionary standpoint, these changes are supposed to prevent starvation when food is hard to come by. But "in an environment in which [high-calorie] food is abundant and physical activity is largely unnecessary, the high rate of relapse after weight loss in not surprising," the researchers state.

"The findings explain why most people find it difficult to maintain weight loss long term," study researcher Joseph Proietto, MBBS, PhD, tells WebMD in an email. Proietto is a professor of medicine at University of Melbourne, Australia. "It may also explain why public health measures adopted so far have generally failed to reduce obesity prevalence."

Does this mean weight regain is inevitable? No, Proietto says, "but published evidence shows that most people have regained lost weight by five years."

Several medications are being studied that may help combat some of these hormonal changes. "Until we have appetite suppressants that are safe to use long term, studies show that the following behaviors are associated with better weight loss maintenance: weigh yourself regularly; eat breakfast; exercise at least one hour per day; and eat a low-fat diet," Proietto says.

Second Opinion

"This is a really important study," says Scott Kahan, MD, an obesity expert at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "It is clear from this study and many others that weight regain is not a problem of willpower."

"Things change hormonally, metabolically, and otherwise after you gain weight so even if you take it off, things don’t go always go back to baseline," he says.

These findings further stress the importance of trying to prevent weight gain and obesity in the first place.

"It is not enough to throw a lot of resources at treating obesity, we need to focus on prevention," he says.

Louis Aronne, MD, founder and director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, agrees.

"[Weight regain] is not your fault," he says. "Achieving weight loss and maintaining that loss is really complex and we need new approaches to treatment including medications."

SOURCES:

Sumithran, P. New England Journal of Medicine, 2011.

Louis Aronne, MD, founder and director, Comprehensive Weight Control Program, New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

Scott Kahan, MD, obesity expert, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.

Joseph Proietto, MBBS, PhD, professor of medicine, University of Melbourne, Australia.

© 2011 WebMD, LLC. All rights reserved.

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WebMD does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.