http://www.zoo.utoronto.ca/zoo344s/2002Group7/_private/octopamine_in_invertebrates_and.htm
http://biolpc22.york.ac.uk/snails/brains/octopamine/physmag.pdf
Those are 2 links that talk about the chemical itself...in insects...which is pretty much all I found as far as studies go.
Here is a little exerpt from T-mag
"Octopamine: A Great New Fat Burner (If You're a Mouse)
Since ephedrine is on the way out, scientists at Biotest have been gearing up to make a bulletproof fat metabolizer that the FDA can't touch. And we're close very, very close.
Other companies think they're close and have launched some interesting things that unfortunately, won't deliver what they promise. Consider octopamine. Octopamine is best known as an insect neurotransmitter that has some beta-3 agonistic properties in rodent ovarian cells. Octopamine is also known as norsynepherine (which means it's somewhat similar to its enantiomer, synpherine). Both compounds are found in varying amounts in C. Auretium (bitter orange herb).
Octopamine is a great beta-3 agonist, it surely is, and it's <I>very</I> safe for humans to use. There is but one small, vexing issue: beta-3 receptors are not found to any significant extent in white fat, only in brown fat. Now rodents and newborn babies have a lot of brown fat. And giving them oral octopamine surely will cause them to lose fat. Adult humans don't have much (if any) brown fat (see any anatomy and physiology textbook for verification) which means adult humans don't have many beta-3 receptors. That means octopamine, from a beta-3 standpoint, isn't going to cause fat loss.
So will octopamine cause fat loss some other way or is octopamine useless? Well, believe it or not, octopamingergic receptors are also found in abundance in insects and are frequent targets of insecticides, so if you need to kill some cockroaches...
The arguments I've heard "for" octopamine are that it's not just a beta-3 agonist (read: useless in humans), it's also an alpha-2 agonist and it can act as a substrate for monoamine oxidase (MAO) and/or semicarbazide-sensitive amine oxidase (SSAO). And since MAO/SSAO substrates promote glucose transport in rat and human adipocytes, it would seem that beta-3 or not, octopamine might have some lipolytic effect through the counter-regulation of insulin action on glucose transport.
Makes sense on paper. Doesn't work in real life. You see, in specially bred rodents devoid of beta-3 receptors, this effect was <I>not </I>seen (6) as octopamine seems to only counteract the effects of insulin through some beta-3 mediated mechanism. Also, human adipocytes, which endogenously express a high level of alpha-2 receptors, exhibited no antilipolytic activity to octopamine (7); however, garden Dormice lost a lot of fat in this same study )for those of you who are trivia buffs).
Look, it's really simple: No beta-3 receptors in white adipocytes equals no fat loss with octopamine. I challenge someone to send me a peer reviewed, published journal article proving me wrong and making me eat crow. Until that happens, save your money on octopamine."
I think I might have changed my mind. Not totally swayed yet.
h19
