Another important satiety regulator in the hypothalamus is CART, which is coexpressed with POMC in arcuate neurons in animals and humans [80]. CART is a hypothalamic neuropeptide that transmits a physiological anorexigenic signal and is involved in appetite regulation. CART knockout mice have increased body weight compared with wild-type mice [81]. Genomic regions containing the CART gene have been linked to both BMI and serum leptin levels in a study of French Caucasian families [82]. SNPs in the 5′ upstream region have been reported to be associated with obesity in Japanese [83] and French [84]. Similar to POMC neurons, CART neurons are directly stimulated by leptin [18, 85]. CART neurons target areas throughout the hypothalamus and are associated with reinforcement and reward, sensory processing, and stress and endocrine regulation. CART expression also exhibits food-dependent diurnal rhythm in blood and brain [86]. Animals deprived of food have decreased the expression of CART mRNA. Intracerebroventricular administration of CART in rats inhibits normal and starvation-induced feeding, as well as blocking the NPY feeding response [18, 85, 87]. CART may be useful to combat
