Oui la nicotine fait maigrir!

Science 10 June 2011: 
Vol. 332 no. 6035 pp. 1330-1332 
DOI: 10.1126/science.1201889

• REPORT

Nicotine Decreases Food Intake Through Activation of POMC Neurons

1. Yann S. Mineur¹, 
2. Alfonso Abizaid²,*, 
3. Yan Rao², 
4. Ramiro Salas³,⁴, 
5. Ralph J. DiLeone¹, 
6. Daniela Gündisch⁵,
7. Sabrina Diano², 
8. Mariella De Biasi³, 
9. Tamas L. Horvath², 
10. Xiao-Bing Gao², 
11. Marina R. Picciotto¹,†

+Author Affiliations

1. ¹Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, 34 Park Street, Third Floor Research, New Haven, CT 06508, USA.
2. ²Department of Comparative Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, 34 Park Street, Third Floor Research, New Haven, CT 06508, USA.
3. ³Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
4. ⁴Psychiatry, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
5. ⁵Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, University of Hawaii at Hilo, 34 Rainbow Drive, Hilo, HI 96720, USA.

+Author Notes

• ↵* Present address: Institute for Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6, Canada.

1. †↵To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: marina.picciotto@yale.edu

ABSTRACT

Smoking decreases appetite, and smokers often report that they smoke to control their weight. Understanding the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the anorexic effects of smoking would facilitate the development of novel treatments to help with smoking cessation and to prevent or treat obesity. By using a combination of pharmacological, molecular genetic, electrophysiological, and feeding studies, we found that activation of hypothalamic α3β4 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors leads to activation of pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) neurons. POMC neurons and subsequent activation of melanocortin 4 receptors were critical for nicotinic-induced decreases in food intake in mice. This study demonstrates that nicotine decreases food intake and body weight by influencing the hypothalamic melanocortin system and identifies critical molecular and synaptic mechanisms involved in nicotine-induced decreases in appetite.