
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, October 21, 1993                   TAG: 9310210120
SECTION: A-20                    PAGE: A-20   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MILWAUKEE                                LENGTH: Medium

A NEW TAKE ON `VANISHING CREAM'

A teaspoon a day seems to have taken the fat away from women's thighs, according to researchers experimenting with a cream made from an over-the-counter asthma remedy.

The research, conducted by a group that includes a distinguished obesity researcher, drew both skepticism and enthusiasm from those who heard it described at a scientific meeting this week.

"It was a very interesting and very preliminary report," but "it's not yet cause for excitement," said Patrick M. O'Neil, director of the Weight Management Center at the Medical University of South Carolina.

O'Neil said questions remain about whether the cream is truly reducing fat and whether its effects will persist. But he immediately began making arrangements to obtain some of the cream to conduct his own tests.

The researchers studied a small group of women, who are more likely than men to have lower-body fat. Men are more prone to abdominal fat. It is also known that women have trouble losing weight in their thighs, since abdominal fat is burned up first, researchers said.

Researchers said that if the cream works, it would provide a safer alternative to liposuction, in which fat is surgically removed from underneath the skin.

Its effects would be primarily cosmetic, however, because fat in the hips and thighs is not of great importance to health. Numerous studies have shown that health risks are associated mostly with abdominal fat, said Dr. Ahmed H. Kissebah of the Medical College of Wisconsin.

The cream has been patented and licensed to an entrepreneur, said one of its developers, Dr. Frank Greenway of the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Greenway said he shares the patent with one of his collaborators, Dr. George Bray, a noted obesity researcher and director of Louisiana State University's Pennington Biomedical Research Center.

The research was described at the annual meeting of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity, an organization of academic scientists doing basic research on causes and possible treatments for obesity.

The cream's active ingredient is aminophylline, an asthma remedy available in pill form without prescription, Greenway said.

by CNB