Use of Dinitrophenol in Obesity and Related Conditions: A Progress Report
clinical paper · 1933
SUMMARY
The Stanford pharmacology group's original clinical progress report establishing that oral DNP produces marked increases in basal metabolic rate (approximately 30-50%) and corresponding weight loss in humans; the paper that launched DNP's 1933-1938 marketing as a weight-loss drug. Later editions of Tainter's group's own work (Tainter, Cutting & Stockton, American Journal of Public Health 24:10 (1934): 1045-1053, PMID 18014064) began documenting the adverse-effect signal that led to the 1938 ban.
NOTES
Primary historical clinical source establishing DNP’s real, replicated clinical effect — a marked increase in basal metabolic rate and corresponding weight loss — the surrogate kernel beneath both the 1930s and modern marketing claims. The underlying mitochondrial-uncoupling mechanism is established by later biochemistry and toxicology (Grundlingh 2011; ATSDR), not by this 1933 clinical report.