Scientists have found a way to allow mice to eat as much fat as they want without becoming obese. The method could one day become a way to prevent and treat obesity in humans, a serious and widespread health problem.

About a third of American adults are obese, explains the study in the eLife magazine, and it's about more than physical appearance: obesity has been linked to serious health problems, such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. For this project, the researchers manipulated something called Hedgehog pathway, a signaling system involved in cell development throughout the body, and they say it was successful in "suppressing obesity" in mice, representing a possible pharmaceutical route for the condition of weight.

According to the University of Washington School of Medicine, the team raised mice with genes that would activate this pathway in the creature's fat cells when they ate a lot of fat. While these mice did not swell with that diet, the control mice without the special genes became obese.

Researchers say that the Hedgehog pathway prevents fat cells from growing beyond a certain size.

"The fat gain is mainly due to the increase in the size of fat cells," said researcher Fanxin Long in a school statement. "Every fat cell grows larger so that it can contain larger fat drops, we gain weight mainly because fat cells grow, instead of having more fat cells."

The new method also kept blood sugar levels low for the treated mice.

It will take some work to make the mouse method work for humans, who also have Hedgehog pathways, but "this could lead to a new therapeutic goal to treat obesity," Long said. "What is particularly important is that the animals in our study consumed a high-fat diet but did not gain weight, and in people, fat in the diet is a common cause of obesity."