Obesity
Obese kids at higher respiratory risk post-surgery
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Obese children who undergo elective surgery typically have more additional medical conditions than their normal-weight peers do and are also at greater risk of developing adverse respiratory events after the procedure, U.S. researchers report.
“Many anesthesiologists may suspect that obese children have a ‘rockier’ anesthetic course than normal-weight children,” lead investigator Dr. Alan R. Tait told Reuters Health. “We have now confirmed that these children do indeed have an increased risk of adverse events.”
The study findings also show the obese children tend to have more illnesses than other children do “which, in and of themselves, may increase their anesthetic risk,” he added.
Rise in midlife stroke in women linked to obesity
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The rapidly rising incidence of stroke among Americans is primarily due to the increasing number of middle-aged women who are having strokes. The increasing incidence is also associated with abdominal obesity, investigators told attendees here at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference 2008.
“The incidence of stroke is two-times higher in women than men between the ages of 35 and 54,” announced Dr. Amytis Towfighi of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
Towfighi and colleagues analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Surveys (NHANES) collected between 1988 and1994 that included 5,112 participants, as well as NHANES data collected between 1999 and 2004 that included 4,594 participants.
Study Details Link Between Obesity, Carbs and Esophageal Cancer
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Cases of esophageal cancer (adenocarcinoma) in the U.S. have risen in recent decades from 300,000 cases in 1973 to 2.1 million in 2001 at age-adjusted rates. A new study published in The American Journal of Gastroenterology shows that these rates in the U.S. closely mirrored trends of increased carbohydrate intake and obesity from 1973-2001.
The study illustrates what may be a public heath concern as the composition of U.S. diets changes and total carbohydrate and refined carbohydrate intakes increase. Obesity is a risk factor for many types of cancer, and a diet that includes a high percentage of calories from refined carbohydrates is a common contributor to obesity. Carbohydrates were also unique in that no other studied nutrients were found to correlate with esophageal cancer rates.
Anesthesia Study Targets Risk Factors in Obese Children
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In the first large-scale study of its kind, investigators from the University of Michigan have discovered that obese children, when compared to normal weight children, have a significantly higher prevalence of pre-existing medical conditions and subsequently experience more problems during and after surgery.
The study, authored by Alan R. Tait, Ph.D., and colleagues, evaluated 2,025 children, ages 2 to 18 years, and offers important insight into the effects of obesity on respiratory problems in children undergoing non-cardiac surgery.
Dr. Tait and his research group found that obese children came to surgery with much higher rates of asthma, hypertension, sleep apnea and diabetes.
Child Obesity Seen as Fueled by Spanish Language TV Ads
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Spanish-language television is bombarding children with so many fast-food commercials that it may be fueling the rising obesity epidemic among Latino youth, according to research led by pediatricians from the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. Latino children, who make up one-fifth of the U.S. child population, also have the highest obesity and overweight rates of all ethnic groups.
A report on the study, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, was released online ahead of print in the Journal of Pediatrics.
“While we cannot blame overweight and obesity solely on TV commercials, there is solid evidence that children exposed to such messages tend to have unhealthy diets and to be overweight,” says study lead investigator Darcy Thompson, M.D., M.P.H., a pediatrician at Hopkins Children’s.
British researchers link obesity to more cancers
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Obesity can double the risk of several cancers, according to a study published on Friday that for the first time also links being overweight with a number of less common forms of the disease.
The analysis of 144 published studies incorporating some 282,000 men and women also showed that gender can make a difference in the relationship between obesity and some cancers, the researchers reported in the Lancet medical journal.
The findings come after a major report from the World Research Cancer Fund in October showed that excess body fat was likely to cause some cancers, said Andrew Renehan, a cancer specialist at the University of Manchester, who led the study.
Diabetes, Cholesterol, Anti-obesity Drugs Top Spending
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U.S. adult consumers spent nearly $36 billion for prescription drugs to lower blood sugar, reduce cholesterol, or help with other metabolic problems in 2005, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Obesity-Related Plasma Hemodilution and PSA Concentration among Men with Prostate Cancer
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The important association that increased circulating plasma volumes in obese men may hemodilute PSA and result in lower levels is reported in the November 21, 2007 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association by Dr. Banez and associates. This may result in delayed indications for prostate biopsy and detection of prostate cancer (CaP) in obese men, which could contribute to the explanation that obese men present with more aggressive CaP.
The data analyzed came from the VA SEARCH database along with data from Duke University and Johns Hopkins University. The number of patients from these sites was 1,373, 1,974, and 10,287, respectively. Body mass index (BMI) was categorized as normal (
<25), overweight (25-29.9), mildly obese (30-34.9), and moderately-severely obese (>35). BMI was examined for association with 3 outcomes variables; serum PSA concentration, plasma volume, and PSA mass. The multivariable model adjusted for a variety of clinical and pathological variables. In particular, to study the relationship of BMI and PSA independent of any association between BMI and CaP severity, cancer-specific variables were also adjusted.
Obesity and Mortality in Men with Locally Advanced Prostate Cancer
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An analysis of RTOG 85-31 patients suggests that increased body mass index (BMI) is associated with increased prostate cancer specific mortality (PCSM). The report appears in the online version of Cancer and is authored by Dr. Efstathiou and collaborators.
Greater BMI is associated with more aggressive higher-grade prostate cancer (CaP) and increase biochemical recurrence rates after radical prostatectomy. There is less data published regarding radiotherapy (XRT). This study sought to analyze the relationship between BMI and PCSM in a large cohort of patients treated with XRT on the RTOG 85-31 trial. RTOG 85-31 was a phase III trial comparing the XRT with indefinite androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) begun during the last week of XRT, to XRT alone with ADT initiated at the time of disease recurrence. Participants had evidence of locally advanced disease, clinical stage T3, or evidence of regional lymph node metastasis. Stage T4 tumors were not included and patients needed a Karnofsky performance status >60%. Total XRT dose was 65-70Gy. PCSM was defined as death from CaP or protocol treatment. All cause mortality (ACM) was death from any cause. Univariate and multivariate analysis was performed, the latter including age, race, centrally reviewed Gleason score, clinical stage, nodal metastasis, prior prostatectomy, treatment arm, and BMI.
Sleep Duration May Play Important Role in Childhood Obesity
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Less sleep can increase a child’s risk of being overweight or obese, according to a study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Their analysis of epidemiological studies found that with each additional hour of sleep, the risk of a child being overweight or obese dropped by 9 percent. The results are published in the February 2008 edition Obesity, the journal of The Obesity Society.
“Our analysis of the data shows a clear association between sleep duration and the risk for overweight or obesity in children. The risk declined with more sleep,” said Youfa Wang, MD, PhD, senior author of the study and associate professor with the Bloomberg School’s Center for Human Nutrition. “Desirable sleep behavior may be an important low cost means for preventing childhood obesity and should be considered in future intervention studies. Our findings may also have important implications in societies where children do not have adequate sleep due to the pressure for academic excellence and where the prevalence of obesity is rising, such as in many East Asian countries.”
Born to Be Obese?
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The brain circuitry that controls appetite might be wired differently in some people, and that could predispose them to obesity, California researchers suggest.
The study was conducted in rats, not humans, and yet it could ultimately lead to novel obesity treatments, said Philip Smith, director of the Office of Obesity Research at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
“It is not just about drugs that modify short-term appetite,” he said, “there may be drugs that stimulate development of the appropriate neural pathways. So, it is an exciting, but very early, time in this field.”
High BP-obesity link varies among Africans: study
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Excess fat may not be the only factor that increases the risk of high blood pressure (hypertension) among obese people of African descent, according to an international research team.
They found that while blood pressure increased with body weight in 13 different groups of Africans or people of African heritage living in the UK, United States, or the Caribbean, the degree to which blood pressure rose with body weight varied among the groups.
Evidence is strong that an increase in blood pressure as body mass index (BMI) rises is universal across the world’s populations, but there has been some research suggesting that the relationship might vary “in populations at the extremes of the BMI distribution,” Dr. Francesco P. Cappuccio of Warwick Medical School in Coventry, UK, and colleagues explain in the medical journal, Epidemiology.
Children with congenital hypothyroidism are at risk of adult obesity due to early adiposity rebound.
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There is some evidence that children with congenital hypothyroidism (CH) are heavier than their reference population. There are few data on adults with CH. The timing of adiposity rebound (AR) in childhood has been shown to have strong correlations with adult obesity. Our aims were to study the timing of AR and factors affecting AR in children with CH.The timing of AR was examined in a retrospective study of children with CH with growth data at least up to 5 years of age.
Testosterone patch has benefits in aging men: study
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Treatment with testosterone can help curb the gain in abdominal fat as well as the loss of skeletal muscle seen in non-obese aging men, according to a new study.
“Though use of testosterone therapy as a means of defying the aging process is gaining popularity, data from scientific trials have been very limited in this area,” study chief Dr. Carolyn Allan, from Prince Henry’s Institute in Victoria, Australia, said in a statement.
Overweight, obesity and cancer: epidemiological evidence and proposed mechanisms
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The prevalence of obesity is rapidly increasing globally. Epidemiological studies have associated obesity with a range of cancer types, although the mechanisms by which obesity induces or promotes tumorigenesis vary by cancer site.
