Leptin and obesity / 中国病理生理杂志

ABSTRACT

Obesity is a severely public health problem the whole society faces, and it is correlated closely with many diseases, such as diabetesⅡ, hypertension, coronary heart disease,gallstone, and so on. Therefore it threatens people's survival quality severely. Obesity is a multiple-factor disease including genetic, metabolic and behavioral factor, and the gene is the main determining factor. With the development of molecular biology technique, people have founded several genes involved in obesity. Among these genes, the research on obese gene is the most profound. The protein leptin is the expression product of the obese gene. This review elucidates the structure, the main biological function, the mechanism of leptin and it's relationship with obesity.