Attempts to understand ingestion have sought to understand the control of meals. The present study evaluated a meal definition that included prandial drinking (drinking-explicit meals). The spontaneous nocturnal intake of male Wistar rats was studied. The meal breakpoint was defined as the interval between feeding or drinking events providing the most stable estimate of meal structure. Alternative breakpoints derived from prevailing methodology, log-survivorship, or frequency histogram analysis of interfeeding intervals without respect to drinking were compared (drinking-naive meals). Threshold interfeeding intervals that accounted for drinking indirectly were evaluated as surrogate breakpoints (drinking-implicit meals). Definitions were compared by determining which criterion better conformed to predictions of satiety. Microstructural differences resulting from the definitions were also studied. Under the drinking-explicit definition, rats averaged nine or ten 13-min meals/night, during which they consumed food and water equally in duration (5-6 min) and quantity (2.3 g). Individual differences were observed in microstructure measures. Meals defined by drinking-informed, but not drinking-naive, methods were followed by the behavioral satiety sequence and by an initially low likelihood of resuming feeding that monotonically increased with time. The drinking-explicit definition uniquely revealed preprandial and postprandial correlations of similar magnitude. Under drinking-informed definitions, food restriction increased meal size, whereas drinking-naive definitions increased meal frequency. Drinking-implicit definitions provided workable approximations of meal frequency and size but inferior estimates of feeding duration, eating rate, and the preprandial correlation. Thus log-survivorship analysis is not appropriate for identifying meal breakpoints, and the consideration of drinking in meal definitions can provide a better estimate of meal structure. feeding or drinking; food-associated drinking; meal size or duration; eating rate; intermeal interval; behavioral satiety sequence; bout microstructure analysis; meal pattern analysis; satiation

Obesity endangers the lives of millions of people worldwide, through comorbidities such as heart disease, cancers, type 2 diabetes, stroke, arthritis, and major depression. New approaches to control body weight remain a high priority. Vaccines traditionally have been used to protect against infectious diseases and, more recently, for unconventional targets such as drug addiction. Methodologies that could specifically modulate the bioavailability of an endogenous molecule that regulates energy balance might provide a new foundation for treating obesity. Here we show that active vaccination of mature rats with ghrelin immunoconjugates decreases feed efficiency, relative adiposity, and body weight gain in relation to the immune response elicited against ghrelin in its active, acylated form. Three active vaccines based on the 28-aa residue sequence of ghrelin, a gastric endocrine hormone, were used to immunize adult male Wistar rats (n ‫؍‬ 17). Synthetic ghrelin analogs were prepared that spanned residues 1-10 [ghrelin (1-10) Ser-3(butanoyl) hapten, Ghr1], 13-28 [ghrelin (13-28) hapten, Ghr2], and 1-28 [ghrelin(1-28) Ser-3(butanoyl) hapten, Ghr3], and included n-butanoyl esters at Ser-3. Groups immunized with Ghr1 or Ghr3 showed greater and more selective plasma binding capacity for the active, Ser-3-(n-octanoyl) form of ghrelin as compared with Ghr2 or keyhole limpet hemocyanin vaccinated controls. Accordingly, they gained less body weight, with sparing of lean mass and preferential reduction of body fat, consistent with reduced circulating leptin levels. The ratio of brain͞serum ghrelin levels was lower in rats with strong anti-ghrelin immune responses. Effects were not attributable to nonspecific inflammatory responses. Vaccination against the endogenous hormone ghrelin can slow weight gain in rats by decreasing feed efficiency.feed efficiency ͉ ghrelin ͉ obesity ͉ body weight regulation ͉ vaccine A pproximately 1 billion people worldwide are overweight or obese (body mass index ϭ 25-29.9 or Ն30 kg͞m 2 , respectively), with disproportionately higher prevalence rates in affluent countries (1). For example, in the United States, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) found that, in [2003][2004], Ϸ66% of all American adults 20 years of age or older were overweight or obese. Almost 4 of every 5 adult men aged 40-59 were so classified (2). Even in children and adolescents between the ages of 6-11 and 12-19, 19% and 17%, respectively, were overweight (2). Alarmingly, the prevalence of obesity has tripled for adolescents in the past two decades. The increase in the number of people who are overweight or obese cuts across all ages, racial and ethnic groups, and both genders (2), and is increasingly global (3, 4). For example, the prevalence of obesity in urban preschoolers in China climbed Ͼ8-fold between 1989 and 1997 (5), and the rate of obesity in British adults rose almost 3-fold from 1980-2002 (6). In 2000, Ͼ110,000 deaths in the United States were associated with obesity, as shown by confound...

Using pharmacological tools, a role for opioid receptors in the regulation of food intake has been documented. However, the involvement of specific receptor subtypes remains questionable, and little information is available regarding a role for opioid receptors in energy metabolism. Using adult male mice lacking the -opioid receptor (MOR) gene (MOR ؊/؊ ), we show that the MOR is not essential for the maintenance of normal levels of ad libitum food intake but does modulate the efficiency of energy storage during high-fat diets through the regulation of energy partitioning. When fed a regular diet, MOR ؊/؊ mice displayed only subtle alterations in energy homeostasis, suggesting a relative overuse of fat as a fuel source in the fed state. When fed a high-fat diet, MOR ؊/؊ mice were resistant to obesity and impaired glucose tolerance, despite having similar energy intake to wild-type mice. This resistance to obesity was associated with a strong induction of the expression of key mitochondrial enzymes involved in fatty acid oxidation within skeletal muscle. This metabolic role of the MOR, which is consistent with the properties of a "thrifty gene," suggests that the MOR pathway is a potential target for pharmacological intervention in the treatment of obesity associated with the intake of fatty diets. Diabetes 54: 3510 -3516, 2005 T he endogenous opioid system encompasses cloned receptor populations (, ␦, and ) and ligands (␤-endorphin, the enkephalins, and the dynorphins). Extensive work indicates that the opioid system plays a role in the regulation of appetite. Opioid receptors and peptides are expressed in sites of the central nervous system that play a role in regulating feeding behavior, and pharmacological experiments using opioid receptor ligands show that agonists promote eating and antagonists decrease food intake, at least in the short term (1-3). Numerous pharmacological studies indicate that opioids also play a role in modulating the rewarding effects of food (3-5). In contrast, little information suggests that opioids have a role in energy metabolism (6 -8).The need to establish the specific role of the opioid receptors in energy homeostasis has led to studies using putative specific opioid receptor ligands or, more recently, antisense probes directed against specific exons of opioid receptor genes (3,9). Pharmacological studies suggest that the and pathways are part of an interconnected brain network and participate in the orexigenic effect of several peptides that regulate food intake (10 -13). However, the interpretation of these data is complicated by our poor knowledge of the in vivo selectivity of ligand-receptor interactions that have been established in vitro (9,14).Recent studies conducted in mutant mice null for the opioid receptors have complemented pharmacological approaches and clarified the role of each receptor in nociception, anxiety, and drug abuse (14). To further define the role of the -opioid receptor (MOR) pathway in energy homeostasis, we characterized mice lacking the MOR gene ...

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