3,5-diiodo-L-thyronine: A Possible Pharmacological Agent?

Overweight and obesity related metabolic disorders, commonly sharing a pathogenic excess of body adiposity, are world-wide epidemic leading to increasing morbidity and mortality. The related conditions include, among the others, liver steatosis, insulin resistance, and cardiovascular risk. Effective and safe anti-obesity drugs are still needed. Likely without undesirable side effects, an ideal treatment should be able to counteract the numerous causes associated with excess of body adiposity putatively modulating the delicate balance between feeding and energy expenditure, untimely controlling the adipose mass. In the past, thyroid hormones have been tested in reducing weight and lipid accumulation, however, the concomitant induction of a thyrotoxicosis state limited their use. Recent studies in rodents revealed that 3,5-diiodo-L-thyronine (T2), an endogenous metabolite of thyroid hormones, exhibits interesting metabolic activities. Specifically, when exogenously administered, T2 increases the resting metabolic rate and elicits short-term beneficial hypolipidemic effects, without being thyrotoxic, at lest in high fat diet fed rats. Now, a matter of interest is whether T2 can be considered or not a potential anti-obesity pharmacological agent. Actually, very few studies have been performed as far as it concerns the effects of T2 in humans and further analyses on larger cohorts to test time of use-and dose-dependent actions as well as the putative occurrence of T2 induced undesirable side effects, are needed. Here, an updated overview of the current literature on T2 bioactivity is furnished with a particular focus on those effects which may be defined beneficial vs. deleterious ones above all in view of its putative pharmacological use.