Where it comes from
- Made in
- The same hypothalamic neurons, and the gut and pancreas
- Sent out by
- Fasting, and glucose in the gut
- Acts on
- Hypothalamus
- Islets
- Gut
What it does
In medicine
- No medicine copies it or blocks it, and no clinical laboratory measures it
- Its blood profile after a glucose load differs between people with normal and with impaired glucose handling, which is a research observation rather than a test 3
Beyond the body’s own use
- Nothing containing it is in trials, approved or obtainable outside the laboratory
- The incretin claim is the one worth watching: a glucose drink releases it from the human gut, and in mice it raises insulin and improves glucose tolerance through its own receptor rather than through GLP-1 23
- What is unknown is whether blocking it would help or hinder. In obese and hyperglycaemic mice the system is overactive, which argues for a blocker, while its insulin effect argues for an agonist; no compound has been given to a person either way 1
Sources
- Chartrel et al., Identification of 26RFa, a hypothalamic neuropeptide with orexigenic activity, PNAS 2003
- Prévost et al., Hypothalamic neuropeptide 26RFa acts as an incretin to regulate glucose homeostasis, Diabetes 2015
- Prévost et al., The neuropeptide 26RFa in the human gut and pancreas, Endocrine Connections 2019
This card describes what a medicine is for and what the evidence says; it recommends nothing. Talk to your clinician about anything you read here.