1.   Attempts to treat human obesity with leptin have been disappointing.

2.   A protein that makes fat mice thin has been definitely linked to human obesity for the first time.

3.   Could lead to new treatments for human obesity.

4.   Despite the elegance of the leptin hypothesis, researchers caution that environment also plays a role in human obesity.

5.   Human obesity, a condition affecting a third of Americans, has for the first time been found to have a genetic cause, at least in some cases.

6.   How much of human obesity will prove attributable to genetics remains to be seen, and gene mutations like those reported by the Cambridge team are probably uncommon.

7.   Rockefeller and Howard Hughes Medical Institute have produced similar results using both mouse and human obesity proteins.

8.   Still, the work is being hailed for confirming that researchers are on the right track in studying genetic defects in overweight mice as models of human obesity.

9.   The news, and its possible role in the future treatment of human obesity, boosts the stock of a California research company.

10.   The long-term objective is better understanding of human obesity.