PL Thomas Reports Key Xanthigen Finding

PL Thomas (Morristown, NJ) says it has new and published evidence to support Xanthigen, a weight management supplement for improving body composition.

Xanthigen is a patent-pending composition of two “antiobesity” ingredients: fucoxanthin (derived from brown seaweed) and punicic acid (a fatty acid from pomegranate seed oil). In 2010, PL Thomas reported on the results of a 16-week human clinical trial in which humans supplementing with Xanthigen showed lower liver fat, lower body weight, and improved liver markers compared to placebo patients. All patients were reported as having non-alcoholic fatty liver disease at recruitment.

The new in vitro study, published in the Journal of Argicultural and Food Chemistry, compared the effects of Xanthigen versus its individual components on fat cell development. Compared to its components, Xanthigen reduced build-up of fatty (adipose) tissue, reduced differentiation of preadipocytes (immature fat cells) into adipocytes (mature fat cells), and even encouraged fat synthesis, according to PL Thomas.

The company says that the study also resulted in a discovery that provides basis for the company’s patent on Xanthigen.

“One of the interesting aspects of the reported mechanism [of Xanthigen] is activation of the Sirt1 gene expression (Sirt1 is sometimes referred to as ‘youth factor’) in the mature fat cells,” said PL Thomas director of scientific and medical affairs Vladimir Badmaev, MD, PhD. “Obesity, overweight status, and aging tend to decrease Sirt-1 gene expression in the body and fat cells, whereas slimming and improving body composition upregulates Sirt-1 gene expression almost in a manner that restore’s the body’s youthful weight and body composition.”

The in vitro study was performed by researchers from National Kaohsiung Marine University (Taiwan), Rutgers University (New Jersey), and PL Thomas and its scientific partner Polinat (Ingenio, Spain).