HYPOTHALAMIC AND GENETIC OBESITY IN EXPERIMENTAL-ANIMALS - AUTONOMIC AND ENDOCRINE HYPOTHESIS

The first part of this review focuses on the obesity that results from hypothalamic injury. The second part of this review deals with the genetic obesities. The focus is primarily on the information published since the earlier review in 1971. This emphasis on recent papers is occasioned by two factors. The first is the explosive growth of publications in these fields. Of the papers in the references dealing explicitly with one or another model, 412 were published since the beginning of 1972. For the types of obesity that are recessively inherited [obese (ob/ob), diabetes (db/db), and fatty (fa/fa)], this explosion is even more apparent, with more than two-thirds of the quoted papers being published since the end of 1971. Thus, a critical review of the recently published information in this field seems particularly important. The second reason for this emphasis on recent papers is that it may now be possible to provide a hypothetical framework from which to view and integrate these new data. Thus, after examining the new data and models in detail, the authors attempt to provide a unitary approach to these models for the study of obesity.