Obesity
Glowing fish shed light on metabolism
A tiny, translucent zebrafish that glows green when its liver makes glucose has helped an international team of researchers identify a compound that regulates whole-body metabolism and appears to protect obese mice from signs of metabolic disorders.
Led by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), the work demonstrates how a fish smaller than a grain of rice can help screen for drugs to help control obesity, type 2 diabetes and other metabolic disorders, which affect a rising 34 percent of American adults and are major risk factors for cardiovascular disease.
Described this week in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, the new compound emerged from a panel of 2,400 medications and drug-like compounds tested in the zebrafish. The test was designed to identify key regulators of “fasting metabolism”- a state most people face every day after the lingering remnants of their long-digested meals pass slowly down their digestive tract.
Fasting metabolism is the body’s way of fulfilling its energy needs between meals by turning to fat and other stored sources. It involves a carefully balanced and coordinated cascade of reactions that see numerous genes in various tissues kick into action and do things like burn fat.
Soda & Obesity
There is a new assault on sodas and other sugar-sweetened beverages, with multiple studies linking them to unnecessary weight gain.
15-year-old Maggie Caudill has entered a weight loss program at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Her goal is to lose about 40 pounds so she can get back to cheerleading and softball.
“I want to be able to run as fast as I can through those bases. I don’t want to get winded and have to use my asthma inhaler,” she says.
Obesity negatively predicts minimal disease activity achievement in patients with PSA
According to a study presented today at EULAR 2012, the Annual Congress of the European League Against Rheumatism, patients with psoriatic arthritis (PsA) who are starting anti-tumour necrosis factor (anti-TNF) treatment and adhere to a hypocaloric diet have a significantly greater chance of achieving minimal disease activity (MDA, an important measure of disease activity) at six months compared to those on a standard diet.
The results of an Italian study of 138 obese PsA patients demonstrated that those who achieved a ≥10% weight loss following a calorie restricted diet, were more likely to achieve MDA, compared to patients on a standard diet (p=0.001). These patients also had significantly higher changes in erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR, a test that indirectly measures the amount of inflammation in the body), and c-reactive protein (CRP, a marker of systemic inflammation, a recently identified predictor of structural damage progression) compared to patients on a standard diet.
“A study presented at the 2009 meeting of the Society for Investigative Dermatology, alerted us to the fact that patients with psoriatic arthritis have an increased prevalence of obesity, however our study has gone beyond that, assessing whether diet is able to improve the achievement of minimal disease activity in obese patients treated with anti-TNFs” said Dr. Dario Di Minno from the University of Naples Federico II, Italy and lead author of the study. “The results of our study suggest that obese patients with psoriatic arthritis who stick to a hypocaloric diet have a greater chance of achieving treatment goals.”
Obese teen had to be cut from home in U.K.
Emergency workers who needed to take an obese teenager from her home to a hospital in Wales had to break through a wall of the residence to get her out and into an ambulance, officials said Friday.
The rescue on the second floor of the small house on Thursday used scaffolding as a ramp to lower the woman to the ground level, the local Rhondda Cynon Taf council said.
The unidentified 19-year-old remained hospitalized Friday and her medical condition was not released.
Neighbors said her weight had risen as high as 380 kilos (835 pounds).
Obesity-Linked Diabetes in Children Resists Treatment
Obesity and the form of diabetes linked to it are taking an even worse toll on America’s youths than medical experts had realized. As obesity rates in children have climbed, so has the incidence of Type 2 diabetes, and a new study adds another worry: the disease progresses more rapidly in children than in adults and is harder to treat.
“It’s frightening how severe this metabolic disease is in children,” said Dr. David M. Nathan, an author of the study and director of the diabetes center at Massachusetts General Hospital. “It’s really got a hold on them, and it’s hard to turn around.”
Before the 1990s, this form of diabetes was hardly ever seen in children. It is still uncommon, but experts say any increase in such a serious disease is troubling. There were about 3,600 new cases a year from 2002 to 2005, the latest years for which data is available.
Beating obesity
Barb Beck wrote a list of 1,703 things she couldn’t do – things she “lost,” she said – because she was too fat.
They were measures of obesity’s toll on every aspect of her life, including her basic dignity: Sit on chairs with arms. Do a somersault. Ride the rides at amusement parks.
Buy regular clothes at regular stores, rather than ordering size 9X garments online.
Clean herself after using the bathroom.
Beating obesity
Barb Beck wrote a list of 1,703 things she couldn’t do – things she “lost,” she said – because she was too fat.
They were measures of obesity’s toll on every aspect of her life, including her basic dignity: Sit on chairs with arms. Do a somersault. Ride the rides at amusement parks.
Buy regular clothes at regular stores, rather than ordering size 9X garments online.
Clean herself after using the bathroom.
Childhood obesity genes identified
An international genome-wide study involving thousands of cases identified at least two new gene variants linked to childhood obesity, a U.S. researcher says.
Lead investigator Struan F.A. Grant, associate director of the Center for Applied Genomics at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and hospital colleagues Jonathan P. Bradfield, Dr. Hakon Hakonarson and Dr. Robert I. Berkowitz said the meta-analysis included 14 previous studies encompassing 5,530 cases of childhood obesity and 8,300 control subjects, all of European ancestry.
The study team identified two novel loci, one near the OLFM4 gene on chromosome 13, the other within the HOXB5 gene on chromosome 17, the study said.
Obese Patients Face Higher Radiation Exposure From CT Scans But New Technology Can Help
Most medical imaging equipment is not designed with overweight and obese patients in mind. As a result, these individuals can be exposed to higher levels of radiation during routine X-ray and CT scans.
A new study from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is the first to calculate exactly how much additional radiation obese patients receive from a CT scan. Research results show the internal organs of obese men receive 62 percent more radiation during a CT scan than those of normal weight men. For obese women, it was an increase of 59 percent.
New technology developed at Rensselaer by nuclear engineering expert X. George Xu could help solve this problem. Xu’s research team created ultra-realistic 3-D computer models of overweight and obese men and women, and used computer simulations to determine how X-rays interact with the different body types. These models, known as “phantoms,” can help empower physicians to configure and optimize CT scanning devices in such a way that minimizes how much radiation a patient receives.
Risk for some cancers rises with U.S. obesity rate
The total number of Americans dying from or diagnosed with cancer is falling, but certain cancers linked to obesity and inactivity are on the rise, according to an annual report on the status of cancer in the United States.
U.S. cancer rates fell 0.6 percent per year between 2004 and 2008, according to the report, based on data from the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other sources.
For men, the incidence of prostate cancer dropped by an average 2.1 percent per year, while lung cancer rates fell 2 percent. In women, lung cancer rates declined by 1.2 percent a year, while the incidence of breast cancer, which is associated with obesity, was flat.
“Breast cancer incidence did drop when hormones were stopped, but it has now plateaued,” said Dr. Powel Brown, chairman of clinical cancer prevention in the department of breast medical oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Likening obesity to child abuse
Can you imagine Social Services storming into your home like Special Ops and seizing your children because of what you’ve fed them?
Taking them away because you’ve allowed them a steady diet of Doritos and Twisters?
Declaring you unfit because you put sugary juice in your toddler’s bottle instead of milk?
Seems extreme. But it has come to that.
Are you obese? Might depend on whether your doctor is, too
Turns out obesity is in the eye of the beholder. Whether you’re diagnosed as obese is supposed to depend on your own body-mass index—but a new study shows that it can also depend on your doctor’s.
Physicians who were overweight or obese were far less likely to diagnose obese patients than physicians at a more normal weight, according to research published this month in the journal Obesity.
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore surveyed 500 primary care physicians nationwide in early 2011 and found that doctors with a normal BMI, below 25, treated their patients very differently than did doctors with a BMI of 25 or higher.
Exercise eases arthritis in obese mice even without weight loss
Adding another incentive to exercise, scientists at Duke University Medical Center have found that physical activity improves arthritis symptoms even among obese mice that continue to chow down on a high-fat diet.
The insight suggests that excess weight alone isn’t what causes the aches and pains of osteoarthritis, despite the long-held notion that carrying extra pounds strains the joints and leads to the inflammatory condition.
Published Sept. 27 online in the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism, the findings are now being tested in people.
“What’s surprising is that exercise, without substantial weight loss, can be beneficial to the joints,” said Farshid Guilak, Ph.D., professor of orthopaedic surgery at Duke and senior author of the study. “Ideally, it would be best to be fit and lose a little weight, but this shows that exercise alone can improve the health of your joints.”
Study suggests prolonged bottle feeding increases the risk of obesity
Experts agree that obesity prevention should begin before children enter school. But due to a lack of conclusive data, health care providers often have trouble advising parents about which interventions are the most beneficial. A new study soon to be published in The Journal of Pediatrics suggests that limiting prolonged bottle use in children may be an effective way to help prevent obesity.
Dr. Robert Whitaker and Rachel Gooze of the Center for Obesity Research and Education at Temple University, and Dr. Sarah Anderson of The Ohio State University College of Public Health, analyzed data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort, a large national study of children born in 2001. They analyzed data from 6750 children to estimate the association between bottle use at 24 months of age and the risk of obesity at 5.5 years of age.
Of the children studied, 22% were prolonged bottle users, meaning that at 2 years of age they used a bottle as their primary drink container and/or were put to bed with a calorie-containing bottle. Nearly 23% of the prolonged bottle users were obese by the time they were 5.5 years old. “Children who were still using a bottle at 24 months were approximately 30% more likely to be obese at 5.5 years, even after accounting for other factors such as the mother’s weight, the child’s birth weight, and feeding practices during infancy,” Dr. Whitaker notes.
Social isolation, stress-induced obesity increases breast cancer risk in mice
Stress from social isolation, combined with a high-fat diet, increases levels of a brain neurotransmitter – neuropeptide Y, or NPY – in mice that then promotes obesity, insulin resistance, and breast cancer risk, say researchers at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, a part of Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC).
Major increases in NPY levels are seen when isolation and the high fat diet are combined. Still, the mice that were isolated for two weeks and fed a control diet had elevated NPY levels and increased terminal end buds, a structure in the mammary gland where mammary cancers form.
The researchers say their findings, reported at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) 102nd Annual Meeting 2011, appear to link a number of findings in humans, such as the fact that social isolation is associated with an increased risk of cancer development and mortality, and that obesity is a risk factor for breast cancer.”
