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In addition to severe lipodystrophy (loss of adipose tissue), individuals with MPL show a concomitant marked loss of lean tissue mass, which also contributes to their "skinny" appearance. Based on visual inspection, it was originally thought that the lipodystrophy associated with MPL was generalized. However, it appears in fact to be partial, being confined to the face, distalextremities, and the paravertebral and lateral regions of the buttocks. Normal amounts of subcutaneous fat are found in the torso over the chest and abdomen. As such, the breasts are normal in females with MPL.
Individuals with MPL have an appearance of being prematurely aged, but this is not due to actual early aging and is instead due to their paucity of subcutaneous fat. As such, MPL is not truly a form of progeria.
In 2016, it was discovered that the partial lipodystrophy associated with MPL is caused by loss of the C-terminal domain cleavage product of profibrillin and novel glucogenic protein hormone, which has been named asprosin. Due to asprosin deficiency, individuals with MPL eat less, and do not gain weight or develop symptoms of diabetes like insulin resistance. MPL patients burn less energy than normal individuals, but also consume less, and their net energy balance is moderately reduced. In contrast to MPL patients, whose asprosin is undetectable in the blood, individuals with obesity and diabetes have elevated levels of asprosin. As such, FBN1 has been nicknamed the "thin gene", and drug development for targeted inhibition of asprosin signaling is considered to be an "unusually promising" potential therapeutic route in the treatment of obesity and diabetes.
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"The girl who must eat every 15 minutes to stay alive". The Telegraph. 28 June 2010. Lizzie Velasquez weighs just four stone and has almost zero per cent body fat but she is not anorexic. Despite consuming between 5,000 and 8,000 calories daily, the communications student, has never tipped over 4st 3lbs.
Duerrschmid C, He Y, Wang C, Li C, Bournat J, Romere C, Saha PK, Lee M, Phillips KJ, Jain M, Jia P, Zhao Z, Farias M, Wu Q, Milewicz DM, Sutton VR, Moore DM, Butte NF, Krashes MJ, Xu Y, and Chopra AR (2017) - "Asprosin Activates the Hypothalamic Hunger-Circuitry" - article under consideration for publication as of 8/30/2017.