Obesity
Ovarian changes may link obesity and infertility
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Obese women have alterations in the environment around the ovary before they ovulate that appear to play a role in the well-documented association between obesity and reduced fertility, according to a report in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
“Characteristics of eggs are influenced by the environment in which they develop within the ovary,” lead author Dr. Rebecca Robker, from Adelaide University, Australia, said in a statement. “Our study found that obese women have abnormally high levels of fats and inflammation in the fluid surrounding their eggs, which can impact an egg’s developmental potential.”
Obese young men likely to die prematurely: study
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People who were obese at the age of 18 are twice as likely to die prematurely compared with those who were normal-weight teenagers, Swedish researchers said on Wednesday.
They also found that men who had been overweight at 18 were one third more likely to die prematurely compared to their normal-weight peers.
The study of 45,920 men over an average 38 years underlines the dangers of being overweight and the need to tackle a growing obesity epidemic.
Growth hormone has benefits after obesity surgery
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In morbidly obese patients who undergo weight loss or “bariatric” surgery, subsequent treatment with growth hormone (GH) for 6 months prevents the loss of lean body mass, researchers have found.
Dr. Silvia Savastano from University Federico II of Naples, Italy, and colleagues investigated the potential role of GH treatment in affecting body weight loss in 24 morbidly obese women who had a type of weight loss surgery called gastric banding, in which a large portion of the stomach is tied off, leaving only a small pouch.
The 12 patients treated with GH and those given placebo lost a similar amount of weight, the investigators found, but patients treated with GH had lower loss of lean body mass and higher loss of fat mass at 3 months.
Mouse study sheds light on obesity gene
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German scientists said on Sunday they have shown how a gene long associated with obesity might make people fat, a finding that could lead to new drugs to help control weight.
Mice without the FTO gene did not become obese and had less fat tissue overall because they burned off more calories even though they moved less and ate more, according to the study published in the journal Nature.
FTO has been long linked to obesity. Studies have shown people with two copies of the “obese” version of the gene on average weigh nearly 7 lbs (3 kg) more and are about 70 percent more likely to be obese than those with other versions.
How and Where Fat Is Stored Predicts Disease Risk Better than Weight
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A study in mice indicates that overeating, rather than the obesity it causes, is the trigger for developing metabolic syndrome, a collection of heath risk factors that increases an individual’s chances of developing insulin resistance, fatty liver, heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
How and where the body stores excess, unused calories appears to matter most when determining a person’s risk of developing metabolic syndrome, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center suggest.
“Most people today think that obesity itself causes metabolic syndrome,” said Dr. Roger Unger, professor of internal medicine at UT Southwestern and senior author of the study. “We’re ingrained to think obesity is the cause of all health problems, when in fact it is the spillover of fat into organs other than fat cells that damages these organs, such as the heart and the liver. Depositing fatty molecules in fat cells where they belong actually delays that harmful spillover.”
Researchers link obesity to birth defects
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Obese women are more likely to give birth to children with spina bifida, heart problems, cleft palate and a number of other defects, British researchers said on Tuesday.
The findings published in the Journal of the American Medical Association underscore obesity’s role as a major health problem and add to evidence that being too heavy while pregnant carries risks for both mother and child.
Katherine Stothard and colleagues from Britain’s Newcastle University combined data from 18 studies to look at the risk of abnormalities of babies whose mothers were obese or overweight.
Sleep disordered breathing and obesity: Independent effects, causes
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In a study that addressed the issue of insulin sensitivity with respect to sleep disordered breathing (SDB), Naresh Punjabi, M.D., Ph.D. sought to examine the relationship between SDB and insulin resistance using the best tools at his disposal to do so.
The results definitively link SDB to pre-diabetic changes in insulin production and glucose metabolism. It was published in the first issue for February of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, published by the American Thoracic Society.
“In the past researchers have used body mass index, or BMI, as a proxy measure for body fat, but we know this to be a variable and crude tool to assess the true percentage of body fat,” said Dr. Punjabi. “In addition, previous studies have used surrogate measurements to assess the body’s response to insulin without investigating the interaction that occurs between reduced insulin sensitivity and increased insulin production in the body.”
Help Possible for People Obsessed With Imaginary Physical Flaws
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Worrying about a bad hair day or idly wishing for a more-perfect profile: we’ve all been there. However, people suffering from body dysmorphic disorder go far beyond that, obsessing over exaggerated or even imaginary physical defects, to the point where it affects their ability to work, attend school or have ordinary social contacts.
Now, a new review finds that both drug therapy and psychotherapy, alone or in combination, can effectively treat the condition. Moreover, treatment can bring be long-lasting relief, according to the South African research team.
“The key finding that treatment effects were maintained over a 4.5 month follow-up [period] after 12 weeks of cognitive behavioral psychotherapy indicates that such therapy may be effective in preventing remission over the longer term,” said lead reviewer Jonathan Ipser, whose work at the University of Stellenbosch in Tygerberg encompasses stress and anxiety disorders.
Obese elderly at high risk for chronic pain
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Half of people aged 70 and older suffer from some type of chronic pain, and women and the obese are particularly vulnerable, new research shows.
Chronic pain, defined as pain that persists for three months or longer, is known to be common among older people, Dr. Richard B. Lipton and colleagues from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York, note. Obesity is becoming increasingly prevalent among US seniors, they add, so studying the relationship between excess weight and chronic pain among older people—as well as the role of conditions that might influence both pain and obesity, such as mental health problems, should be studied.
To that end, Lipton and his team looked at 840 men and women participating in the Einstein Aging Study, an ongoing investigation of people 70 and older living in the Bronx.
Physical activity may not be key to obesity epidemic
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A recent international study fails to support the common belief that the number of calories burned in physical activity is a key factor in rising rates of obesity.
Researchers from Loyola University Health System and other centers compared African American women in metropolitan Chicago with women in rural Nigeria. On average, the Chicago women weighed 184 pounds and the Nigerian women weighed 127 pounds.
Researchers had expected to find that the slimmer Nigerian women would be more physically active. To their surprise, they found no significant difference between the two groups in the amount of calories burned during physical activity.
Food regulation threat if obesity plan fails
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The government will consider regulating the food industry if a three-year health lifestyle campaign fails to reduce obesity levels in England, Health Minister Ben Bradshaw said on Friday.
The government kicks off the Change4Life campaign on Saturday with television, magazine and billboard adverts urging people to adopt a healthier lifestyle.
The action is being taken after forecasters said obesity was rising so fast that by 2050 four out of 10 children and nine out of ten adults will be overweight or obese.
Fast food near schools means fatter kids
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Adolescents who go to school within a half-mile of a fast-food restaurant are more likely to be overweight or obese than kids whose schools are further away, new research suggests.
The young people in the study also ate fewer servings of fruits and vegetables and drank more soda if there was at least one fast food restaurant within a half-mile radius of their school, Drs. Brennan Davis of Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, California and Christopher Carpenter of the University of California at Irvine found.
“Overall, our patterns are consistent with the idea that fast food near schools affects students’ eating habits, overweight, and obesity,” they conclude in a report in the American Journal of Public Health.
Minimizing Obesity’s Impact on Ovarian Cancer Survival
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Obesity affects health in several ways, but new research shows obesity can have minimal impact on ovarian cancer survival. A study by researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Comprehensive Cancer Center found ovarian cancer survival rates are the same for obese and non-obese women if their chemotherapy doses are closely matched to individual weight.
The findings contradict earlier research that shows obese women have lower ovarian cancer survival rates compared to non-obese patients. In the UAB study, such survival disparity disappeared when chemo doses were calculated by actual body weight rather than a different dosing standard, said Kellie Matthews, M.D., a UAB gynecologic oncologist and lead author on the new study.
“Often chemotherapy dosing is calculated using ‘ideal’ body weight as a guide. We found using actual body weight works best, and it wipes away much of the difference in survival rates between obese and non-obese patients,” Matthews said.
Who are you kidding?
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The research was carried out by a team of researchers led by Sharon Herring, MD, MPH, an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Public Health at Temple University. She said, “Compared to normal weight women who accurately assessed their pre-pregnancy weight status, the odds of gaining excessively during pregnancy were increased seven-fold among overweight and obese women who thought they weighed less than they really did. Normal weight women who thought they were overweight had twice the odds of excessive gestational weight gain.”
The authors studied 1537 women enrolled in Project Viva, a US birth cohort, who were normal weight, overweight or obese at the beginning of their pregnancies. Underweight women were not included. Of the 1029 normal weight participants, 898 (87%) correctly reported that they were normal weight just prior to pregnancy, while 131 (13%) incorrectly thought they were overweight or obese. Of the remaining women who were overweight or obese, 438 (86%) accurately perceived their body weight status, while 70 (14%) under-assessed their size before pregnancy.
Augsburg: Weight issues in children starting school
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Immigrant children have a greater risk of suffering from overweight and obesity. This is the result of a study from Augsburg with 2306 children examined on starting school. Elisabeth Weber and her coauthors present the results in the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztbl Int 2008; 105 [51-52]: 883-9). The doctors recorded not only the age, sex, weight, and height of the children, but also their mother tongue. Their parents had to answer a questionnaire covering sporting activity, amount of television watched, and eating behavior.
German was the mother tongue of 1398 of the children examined. Turkish was the most frequent foreign language (395 children), followed by Russian (183 children). Other languages were subsumed under “other” (419 children). In all, 302 children (13.1%) suffered from overweight and 133 children (4.9%) were obese.
