Chicken ghrelin and growth hormone-releasing peptide-2 inhibit food intake of neonatal chicks.
Saito. Ei-suke ES; Kaiya. Hiroyuki H; Takagi. Tomo T; Yamasaki. Izumi I; Denbow. D Michael DM; Kangawa. Kenji K; Furuse. Mitsuhiro M
Key Findings
- Intracerebroventricular injection of GHRP‑2 suppresses food intake in neonatal chicks.
- Chicken ghrelin and rat ghrelin produce a similar strong feeding inhibition in chicks.
- Bullfrog ghrelin, despite a small amino‑acid change, also strongly reduces chick feeding.
Practical Outcomes
- The study demonstrates that GHRP‑2 can act as an appetite suppressant in birds, but the experiment used direct brain injection in very young chicks, which is far from how humans would use the peptide. For biohackers, this provides no actionable dosing or protocol guidance for appetite control in people and highlights the need for human‑specific research before considering GHRP‑2 for weight‑management purposes.
Summary
In baby chickens, injecting GHRP‑2 (a synthetic ghrelin‑like peptide) into the brain reduced how much they ate. The same effect was seen with natural ghrelin from chickens, rats, and even bullfrogs. This shows that the chick’s appetite‑control system responds to several ghrelin‑type molecules.
Abstract
Ghrelin is an endogenous ligand for the growth hormone secretagogue (GHS) receptor. Ghrelin stimulates feeding in rats, however, intracerebroventricular (i.c.v.) injection of rat ghrelin inhibits feeding of neonatal chicks. In the present study, the effect of i.c.v. injection of different ghrelins including chicken and bullfrog ghrelin, and synthetic GH-releasing peptide (GHRP) on feeding of neonatal chicks was investigated. Chicken ghrelin strongly suppressed feeding. To compare the inhibitory effect, chicken and rat ghrelin were examined. The suppressive effect of feeding by chicken and rat ghrelin was almost identical. Bullfrog ghrelin contains a change in the acylated amino acid from Ser to Thr, strongly suppressed feeding. The i.c.v. injection of GHRP-2 (KP-102), a synthetic GHS, also inhibited feeding. These results indicate that the chicken GHS receptor is affected by several forms of GHS, and that food intake of neonatal chicks is inhibited by GHS receptor agonists.
Study Information
pubmed
2002
2002-10-18T00:00:00.000Z
10.1016/s0014-2999(02)02393-2