Chromium Picolinate Lowers Food Intake

BATON ROUGE, La.—A recent study found chromium picolinate (CrPic) plays a role in food intake regulation, which may be mediated by a direct effect on the brain (Diabetes Technol Ther. 2008;10(5):405-12) (DOI:10.1089/dia.2007.0292).
The study was broken up into two studies: (Study 1) A double blind, placebo-controlled designed randomly assigned 42 healthy, overweight, adult women who reported craving carbohydrates to receive 1,000 mg of CrPic or a placebo for eight weeks; (Study 2) Sprague-Dawley rats fasted for 24 hours and subsequently injected intraperitoneally with 0, 1, 10 or 50 μg/kg of CrPic. Afterward, rats were implanted with an indwelling third ventricular cannula. Following recovery, 0, 0.4, 4 or 40 ng of CrPic was injected directly into the brain via the intracerebroventricular cannula, and spontaneous 24-hour food intake was measured.
In study 1, CrPic reduced food intake (P<0.0001), hunger levels (P<0.05), fat cravings (P<0.0001) and tended to decrease body weight (P=0.08) compared to the placebo. In study 2, intraperitoneal administration resulted in a subtle decrease in food intake at only the highest dose (P=0.03). However, when administered centrally, CrPic dose-dependently decreased food intake (P<0.05).