The Non-GLP-1 Drug That Burns Fat While Preserving Muscle

…and other items from this week’s health science news:

Best of both worlds?

GLP-1 receptor agonists are well-known for their weight-loss efficacy, but the problem is that reducing overall food intake typically results in muscle loss as well as fat loss.

That’s a big problem, especially as we get older and maintaining muscle becomes 1) harder 2) increasingly more essential to healthy longevity (basically, the opposite of frailty).

The good news is that researchers (Dr. Melissa Boldridge et al.) have identified a compound known to its friends as 5-tetradecyloxy-2-furoic acid (TOFA) that promotes weight loss by increasing the amount of energy the body burns, rather than primarily reducing appetite and calorie intake like GLP-1 drugs.

Why TOFA is unusual: earlier acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC) inhibitors often increased triglycerides, which can raise cardiovascular risks, whereas TOFA (an ACC-inhibitor) also activates PPARα and PPARδ pathways, helping promote fat oxidation and energy expenditure, and did not produce the same triglyceride increase in these experiments, meaning that it’s probably safer on that front, too.

That said, there will be more testing to make sure, before it hits the market:

Read in full: Promising new weight loss and diabetes treatment helps burn fat while keeping muscle in preclinical study

Related: GLP-1 RAs For Weight Loss (But How Much Of That Loss Is Muscle?)

The blood tests that predict disabilities later in life

Researchers (Dr. Yukiko Abe et al.) looked for blood proteins that could predict who would later develop disability, with the goal of identifying risk early enough for preventive support.

To do this, the researchers analyzed 29 blood proteins in 230 disability-free adults aged 85–89 from Japan’s Kawasaki Aging Well-being Project, who were followed for about 4.5 years. They then further tested the findings in the Italian InCHIANTI aging study, which followed participants for up to 15 years.

The strongest biomarkers are good ones to know: higher levels of beta-2-microglobulin (B2M) and cystatin C were consistently associated with a greater risk of future disability. Each increase was associated with a hazard ratio of 1.35 for B2M and 1.42 for cystatin C, even after accounting for factors such as age, sex, kidney function, lifestyle, and other potential confounders.

This is very useful, as identifying higher-risk individuals earlier means being able to take preventative action earlier:

Read in full: Blood protein biomarkers predict future disability risk in very old adults

Related: 6 Blood Markers That Predict Disease Years Before Symptoms Appear

Does reducing social contact improve wellbeing?

Written like that, we expect most readers would answer “no”.

But if we had phrased it “Does limiting social media use improve wellbeing“, we’d probably have had much more of a split, and if anything, most would probably guess “yes”.

The answer, however, is still “no”. As it turns out, social contact is social contact regardless of the means, communication is communication regardless of the means, and real human connection is real human connection regardless of the means.

Researchers (Dr. Abigail Bradley et al.) assigned 873 young adults use social media normally or to follow limits ranging from 30–60 minutes per day, while she and her team also tracked depression, anxiety, loneliness, emotions, autonomy, and life satisfaction.

There was no measurable benefit: none of the tested approaches—including limiting specific apps or restricting interactions to people known offline—produced improvements in well-being compared with normal use:

Read in full: For young adults, limiting social media use doesn’t improve well-being

Related: Make Social Media Work For Your Mental Health

Take care!