Heimann. Effects of amylin-related peptides on food intake, meal patterns, and gastric emptying in rats. Am J Physiol Regulatory Integrative Comp Physiol 282: R1395-R1404, 2002. First published January 17, 2002 10.1152/ajpregu.00597. 2001.-We previously demonstrated that amylin inhibits food intake and gastric emptying in rats with half-maximal effective doses (ED 50s) of 8 and 3 pmol ⅐ kg Ϫ1 ⅐ min Ϫ1 and maximal inhibitions of 78 and 60%, respectively. In this study of identical design, rats received intravenous infusions of salmon calcitonin (sCT), rat calcitonin (rCT), rat calcitonin gene-related peptide (rCGRP), and rat adrenomedullin (rADM) for 3 h at dark onset, and food intake was measured for 17 h or for 15 min and gastric emptying of saline was measured during the final 5 min. sCT, rCGRP, and rADM inhibited food intake with estimated ED50s of 0.5, 26, and 35 pmol ⅐ kg Ϫ1 ⅐ min Ϫ1 and maximal inhibitions of 88, 90, and 49%, respectively. rCT was not effective at doses up to 100 pmol ⅐ kg Ϫ1 ⅐ min Ϫ1 . sCT, rCGRP, rADM, and rCT inhibited gastric emptying with ED50s of 1, 130, 160, and 730 pmol ⅐ kg Ϫ1 ⅐ min Ϫ1 and maximal inhibitions of 60, 66, 60, and 33%, respectively. These results suggest that amylin and sCT may act by a common mechanism to decrease food intake, which includes inhibition of gastric emptying.calcitonin; calcitonin gene-related peptide; adrenomedullin; anorexia; potency AMYLIN (ALSO CALLED ISLET amyloid polypeptide) is a 37-amino acid peptide that is cosecreted with insulin from the pancreas in response to a meal (11, 51). Amylin has also been detected in gut endocrine cells (35), visceral sensory neurons (36), and throughout the brain (44). Exogenous amylin potently reduces food intake (1, 3, 39), body weight (1), adiposity (41), gastric emptying (10, 39), and gastric acid secretion (15) when administered systemically or into the brain. We recently demonstrated that the minimal effective intravenous dose for amylin-induced inhibition of food intake and gastric emptying in rats (1 pmol ⅐ kg Ϫ1 ⅐ min Ϫ1 ) increases plasma amylin by an amount comparable to that produced by a meal (3,39). We also demonstrated that in suppressing feeding and gastric emptying, amylin is at least as potent and efficacious as CCK (39), a physiological inhibitor of food intake and gastric emptying.These results support the hypothesis that amylin acts as a hormonal signal to the brain to inhibit gastric emptying and food intake and that amylin produces satiety, in part, through inhibition of gastric emptying.Calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP), calcitonin (CT), and adrenomedullin (ADM), together with amylin, form a family of structurally related peptides with overlapping biological actions (Fig. 1). Each of these peptides inhibits food intake (13,22,32,45) and gastric emptying (8,20,30,38) when administered systemically or into the brain. The teleost peptide salmon CT (sCT) appears to be significantly more potent than either amylin (29) or mammalian CTs (8, 29, 47) in decreasing food intake and gastric emp...