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Slim down with an alpha-amylase inhibitor? Brittany McDaniel and Xuejuan Zhang ISMD Award # 1R25GM086761-01.
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Slim down with an alpha-amylase inhibitor? Brittany McDaniel and XuejuanZhang ISMD Award # 1R25GM086761-01 Background: These days everyone is looking for an easy fix to some excess weight they are carrying around, and of course there are going to people taking advantage of them. There are many pills out there promising to melt inches off of one’s waist. One company out there is called Whole Health with a product called Phase 2 Starch Blockers. This pill contains the alpha-amylase inhibitor, phaseolamin, which is present in white kidney beans, and if you’re really serious about losing weight they have a product for $5 more that has chromium in it, which slows down sugar metabolism. We are looking at what science says about these weight loss pills and the structures of various alpha amylase inhibitor. Conclusion: Based on the information presented in Grant et. al, I would not take an alpha-amylase inhibitor to lose weight. Future research could look at other possible resources for weight loss. Figure 1. The above image was constructed in swisspdb viewer. We took four different alpha amylase inhibitors in complex and performed a magic fit. The different colors represent different complexes. Since the alpha-amylase enzymes were very similar we only show one of the four. Materials and Methods: A paper done by Grant, et. al. did an experiment on rats looking at these type of weight loss pills to observe how effective, if at all, they are. References: ARPAD PÃœSZTAI, GEORGE GRANT, TRACEY DÃœGÃœID, DAVID S. BROWH, WILLY J. PEÃœMANS,ELS J. M. VAN DAMME, AND SUSAN BARDOCZ. Inhibition of Starch Digestion by a-Amylase Inhibitor Reduces the Efficiency of utilization of Dietary Proteins and Lipids and Retards the Growth of Rats1. Journal of Nutrition: 1554-1556, 1995.