About the Authors

Emily J. Dhurandhar

Affiliation School of Public Health, Office of Energetics, Nutrition Obesity Research Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

David B. Allison

Affiliation School of Public Health, Office of Energetics, Nutrition Obesity Research Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Thomas van Groen

Affiliation Department of Cell, Developmental and Integrative Biology, Nutrition Obesity Research Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Inga Kadish

ikadisha@uab.edu

Affiliation Department of Cell, Developmental and Integrative Biology, Nutrition Obesity Research Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Competing Interests

David B. Allison, Ph.D. has served as a consultant to Medifast. Dr. Allison has, anticipates, or has had financial interests with Vivus, Inc. and Kraft Foods, Paul Weiss, Wharton, and Garrison LLP; and Sage Publications. The ghrelin agonist was donated for the study by Eli Lilly. There are no further patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online in the guide for authors.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: DBA IK. Performed the experiments: IK EJD TvG. Analyzed the data: EJD TvG. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: IK TvG. Wrote the paper: EJD IK DBA.