Canker Sore Drug Amlexanox Helps Mice Lose Weight Without Diet and Exercise

The same drug used to treat canker sores may actually be used to help with obesity in mice. According to a study at the University of Michigan, a relatively obscure drug used to treat mouth sores may actually help these little guys even lose weight without any exercise. Hopes are also high that the same effectiveness can be applied to humans, but researchers warn that many drugs that work in mice often do not work in humans.

"It is a tour de force and offers a new and potentially exciting opening for developments of new anti-obesity drugs -- something which is badly needed," says Dr. George Bray, chief of the Division of Clinical Obesity and Metabolism at Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University according to CNN Health. 

Researchers gave mice a high-fat diet, and so they became obese. They then injected the animals with a drug called amlexanox, which has been on the market for over 15 years to treat canker sores. The mice lost weight, even though they kept eating the same number of calories. However, when they were taken off the drug, the mice gained all the weight back.

"It could well be that what works for one disease will turn out to work for another, even though that wasn't the original intent," he said.

When the drug was injected in mice, the drug worked by increasing metabolism, not by suppressing appetite.

"One of the reasons that diets are so ineffective in producing weight loss for some people is that their bodies adjust to the reduced calories by also reducing their metabolism, so that they are 'defending' their body weight," says Dr. Alan Saltiel, the lead researcher at the University of Michigan.

 "Amlexanox seems to tweak the metabolic response to excessive calorie storage in mice."

The findings were published Sunday in the journal Nature Medicine.

Clinical trials are expected to begin later this year to test the drug's effectiveness in humans.