Obesity
Obesity might lead to more aggressive ovarian cancer
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Obesity might cause an increase in deaths related to ovarian cancer, according to a study published in the Aug. 28 edition of the journal Cancer, the New York Times reports.
Andrew Li, assistant ob-gyn professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California-Los Angeles, and colleagues reviewed the medical records—which included information about the women’s age, height, weight and chronic conditions—of 216 women who underwent surgery for epithelial ovarian cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles to determine whether excess fat had a direct effect on tumor growth (Bakalar, New York Times, 8/29). Thirty-five of the women were considered obese, which was defined as having a body mass index of 30 and greater, and half of the women had an ideal BMI (BBC News, 8/28). Women with BMIs of between 18.5 and 25.0 were defined as having an ideal BMI, according to the study (Pavelka et al., Cancer, 8/28).
England facing obesity crisis
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Nearly a third of men in England will be obese by 2010 if no measures are taken to tackle the problem, a government report warned on Friday.
A quarter of adults are already obese with the level nearly doubling among men since 1993 as the consumption of “energy dense” junk food rises and levels of physical activity fall.
Among children, the report added, the number of obese girls will overtake boys over the next four years if current trends continue.
China Follows the West to Becoming Obese
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People in China are becoming overweight and obese at an alarmingly fast rate, according to an editorial in this week’s BMJ.
Numbers of people in China who are now classified as overweight and obese have risen sharply in a relatively short time, says Professor Yangfeng Wu from the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in Beijing.
They account for one fifth of the world’s population in this condition, despite China once being seen as country with a lean population.
Infants more heavy today than 20 years ago
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By examining more than 120,000 children under age 6 in Massachusetts over 22 years, a newly published study shows that young children - especially infants - are now more likely to be overweight.
This study was based at the Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention of Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and appears in the July issue of Obesity.
“The obesity epidemic has spared no age group, even our youngest children,” says Matthew Gillman, MD, senior author of the study and associate professor in the Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention (of Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care).
Medical technology fails to cope with obese patients
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Researchers in the U.S. say that more and more Americans are missing out when it comes to receiving full medical care because they are too obese to fit into scanners or their fat is too dense for X-rays or sound waves to penetrate.
Radiologists at Massachusetts General Hospital suggest that with a growing population of overweight people, the problem is getting worse.
The researchers assessed all radiology examinations carried out at the hospital between 1989 and 2003 in order to determine the effects of obesity on imaging quality and diagnosis.
Sleep deprivation doubles risks of obesity in both children and adults
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Research by Warwick Medical School at the University of Warwick has found that sleep deprivation is associated with an almost a two-fold increased risk of being obese for both children and adults.
Early results of a study by Professor Francesco Cappuccio of the University of Warwick’s Warwick Medical School were presented to the International AC21 Research Festival hosted this month by the University of Warwick.
The research reviewed current evidence in over 28,000 children and 15,000 adults. For both groups Professor Cappuccio found that shorter sleep duration is associated with almost a two-fold increased risk of being obese.
Death risk rises in women as obesity worsens
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Obesity is known to increase a person’s risk of death and now, new findings from a study of more than 90,000 women indicate that the risk continues to increase as the severity of obesity worsens.
“It’s not good enough to consider obesity alone,” principal investigator Dr. Kathleen McTigue of the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, told Reuters Health. “You need to look at degree of obesity.”
In a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, McTigue and colleagues evaluated the impact of body weight on death risk in 90,185 women enrolled in the Women’s Health Initiative Observational Study. On average, the patients were followed for 7 years.
New theories on world’s obesity pandemic
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Fatty hamburgers, sugar-laden sodas and a couch-potato lifestyle: these are the familiar villains in the crisis of obesity sweeping developed countries.
But what if they had been convicted without fair trial?
What if the global fat explosion had other causes?
Hospitals prepare for growing ranks of obese
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As Americans keep getting bigger, hospitals are revamping themselves to accommodate an influx of obese patients.
When these patients check into a hospital, they are increasingly likely to find themselves in a room with a wider doorway than the 42-inch standard, a bed that holds up to 1,000 pounds and a ceiling lift system to move them to the bathroom.
Toilets in such a room are extra-sturdy and mounted to the floor instead of a wall.
Adolescents who live in poverty are more likely to be overweight
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Adolescents aged 15-17 years who live in poverty are more likely to be overweight than those not living in poverty, a difference that has emerged in the past decade, according to a study in the May 24/31 issue of JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association.
The number of adolescents in the U.S. who are overweight has more than doubled during the past 3 decades. As the prevalence of adolescent overweight continues to increase, so too will its associated consequences, including type 2 diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obstructive sleep apnea, poor quality of life, and increased illness and risk of death in adulthood, according to background information in the article. Whether the increasing prevalence of adolescent overweight is characterized by larger, smaller, or unchanged disparities in overweight status across socioeconomic strata has not been known.
Richard A. Miech, Ph.D., M.P.H., of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and colleagues examined trends in the prevalence of overweight among adolescents aged 12 to 17 years by family poverty status. The researchers used data from four cross-sectional, nationally representative surveys (U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys [NHANES] of 1971-1974, 1976-1980, 1988-1994, and 1999-2004).
Calcium’s Impact on Weight Reduction, Bone Loss in Decade After Menopause
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Armed with an $840,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the latest in world-class body scanning technology, a Florida State University researcher in the College of Human Sciences soon will begin the largest, longest study to-date on the efficacy of calcium - through dairy products, supplements or both - for weight reduction and bone preservation in overweight or obese postmenopausal Caucasian women.
Along the way, the comprehensive four-year project at FSU will include nutritional outreach efforts to disadvantaged communities and also will take a look at longstanding assumptions about lactose intolerance in African-Americans.
Department of nutrition, food and exercise sciences Professor Jasminka Ilich will spearhead the calcium research targeting Caucasian women who are two to ten years past menopause and classified as overweight or obese based on a body mass index (BMI) of 26 or greater. Results are expected to shed additional light on calcium’s cell-level role in the overall functioning of bone and adipose (fat) tissue in such women.
Americans are eating safer!
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The number of people who reported eating one or more foods associated with an increased risk of foodborne disease declined by a third from 1998 to 2002, according to survey results released at the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases.
“Overall we are seeing a decline in risky food consumption and that may be attributable to published media reports of foodborne outbreaks and outreach efforts by the public health community,” says Erica Weis of the California Department of Health Services, the lead author on the study.
Reducing Teens’ Intake of Sugary Drinks
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Children’s intake of sugar-sweetened drinks - sodas, sports drinks, “juice drinks,” iced teas, lemonades and punches - has surged in recent decades, in step with the rise in childhood obesity. Now, in the March issue of Pediatrics, researchers from Children’s Hospital Boston report that a novel intervention to limit consumption of sugary drinks -home deliveries of noncaloric beverages - had a beneficial effect on weight loss.
The randomized, controlled trial, led by Cara Ebbeling, PhD, and David Ludwig, MD, PhD, in the hospital’s Division of Endocrinology, enrolled 103 children aged 13 to 18 through a Boston area high school. The teens were offered a $100 mall gift certificate if they stuck with the six-month study, and all did.
Half the teens, picked at random, received weekly deliveries of noncaloric beverages of their own choosing - bottled waters and artificially-sweetened drinks. They were instructed to avoid sugar-sweetened beverages and advised on how to choose noncaloric drinks outside the home. Monthly phone calls and refrigerator magnets (“Think Before You Drink”) provided reminders. The remaining teens, serving as a control group, were asked to continue their usual eating and drinking patterns.
Medicare to pay for some obesity surgeries
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Obese elderly or disabled patients are now eligible for a variety of surgical weight-loss procedures under the U.S. Medicare health insurance plan, U.S. government officials said on Tuesday.
Patients must have tried and failed other weight loss options, have at least one weight-related medical problem and have a high body mass index, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said.
Sanofi shares fall as FDA delays anti-obesity drug
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Sanofi-Aventis shares fell as much as 4.5 percent on Monday after U.S. regulators delayed final approval of its experimental anti-obesity pill Acomplia, which is among the world’s most keenly awaited new drugs.
A spokesman for the world’s third-largest drugmaker said a final decision was expected in the next few months, but some analysts do not now expect it to reach the market until 2007.
