News • Women's health
Why obesity makes ovarian cancer more deadly
A new study led by researchers from the University of Notre Dame links a high body mass index (BMI) to alterations in the structure and environment of cancerous tumors.
Obesity
News • Weight gain risks during pregnancy
Eating for two? It's not that simple
The old adage that expectant mums are ‘eating for two’ and don’t need to worry about weight gain can lead to health consequences for mum and baby, maternal health experts warn.
News • Booster shot frequency
Covid-19: Vaccination immunity wears off faster in obese people, study finds
Protection offered by Covid-19 vaccination declines more rapidly in people with severe obesity than in those with normal weight, scientists at the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh have found.
News • Cardiology study
Does the ‘obesity paradox’ exist? New research debunks myth
New research has debunked the idea of an “obesity paradox”, whereby overweight or obese patients with heart failure are less likely to end up in hospital or die than people of normal weight.
News • Alternative to liver biopsy
Exploring the benefits of non-invasive MR Elastography in obese patients
Omar Darwish, PhD student at King's College London, is researching new approaches to 3D MRE sequences for measuring liver fibrosis and inflammation simultaneously in obese patients.
News • Psychological issues of NCMP
Childhood obesity programme: doing more harm than good?
England’s National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) is designed to tackle childhood obesity. However, a new study suggests it might give rise to mental health problems in children.
News • Medication and surgery recommendations
Childhood obesity guidelines: the end of 'watchful waiting'
The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued its first comprehensive guideline on the evaluation and treatment of children and adolescents with obesity, marking an end to previous recommendations.
News • Hormone activation gone awry
How insufficient insulin processing leads to obesity
Overweight increases the risk of an imbalance in sugar metabolism and even diabetes – but the opposite is also true: insulin production deficits contribute to overweight, a new study shows.
News • Live bacterial therapeutics
Engineering the microbiome to potentially cure disease
Development of effective live bacterial therapeutics may depend more on using and re-introducing native microbes that can stick around than how the microbes are modified.
News • Metabolic disorders
Decoding a direct dialog between gut microbiota and brain
Hypothalamic neurons in an animal model directly detect variations in bacterial activity and adapt appetite and body temperature accordingly.
News • Obesity
People should focus more on fitness over weight loss
When it comes to getting healthy and reducing mortality risk, increasing physical activity and improving fitness appear to be superior to weight loss.
News • Cardiology research
Strong connection between heart health and pregnancy complications
A study of more than 18 million pregnancies has shown a strong and graded relationship between women’s heart health and pregnancy outcomes. The research is published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). The researchers examined the presence of four risk factors for cardiovascular disease in women prior to pregnancy: unhealthy…
News • Prognosis
Better heart failure outcomes through biomarker-based treatment
In a recent study by University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers, findings indicate that among patients with heart failure, obesity is associated with a higher risk of heart failure hospitalization or death due to cardiac causes. However, achieving biomarker-based treatment goals in heart failure improves the prognosis for patients irrespective of their obesity status.
Article • Sonography challenges
Abdominal ultrasound: promising for imaging of obese patients
Imagers need special scenarios, skills and tools to examine larger patients, who present more challenges when it comes to radiological procedures. New ultrasound devices could help reduce dose exposure in these patients, who are more likely to undergo x-ray based examinations and receive a higher dose during those, experts explained in a dedicated session during ECR 2020.
News • Profiling the coronavirus
Risk factors for severe and fatal COVID-19 cases identified
Age, male sex, obesity, and underlying illness have emerged as risk factors for severe and fatal cases of COVID-19 in the UK, according to the largest cohort study to date published by The BMJ. As the largest prospective observational study reported worldwide to date, it provides a comprehensive picture of the characteristics of patients hospitalised in the UK with COVID-19 and their outcomes.…
News • Surprising side-effects
A new cancer drug (that fights obesity and diabetes, too)
Eric Prossnitz, PhD, from the University of New Mexico Health Services and his team hope to help 93 million obese Americans fight their fat. In a paper published in Science Translational Medicine, they reported that G-1, a cancer-fighting compound they discovered some years ago, reduces fat in obese mice. Although G-1 is currently in phase 1 clinical trials for cancer, Prossnitz and his team are…
News • Updating treatments
Sugar and fat can make cancer cells harder to kill
In their quest to find new and better methods to make cancer cells more susceptible to treatment, Karin Lindkvist and her research group at Lund University in Sweden are looking into the world of molecules, using the X-rays at the MAX IV laboratory. The researchers believe that limiting the cells' access to sugar will make cancer cells more sensitive to treatment. Many of the cancer treatments…
News • Obesity, heart disease, diabetes
Are NCD not so "non-communicable" after all?
Diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer or certain lung diseases are among the most common non-natural causes of death today and account for about 70 percent of deaths worldwide. They are defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as non-communicable because they are assumed to be caused by a combination of genetic, lifestyle and environmental factors and cannot be transmitted…
News • New nutrition study
Childhood obesity: a surprisingly complex topic
The World Health Organization has estimated more than 340 million children and adolescents ages 5-19 are overweight or obese, and the epidemic has been linked to more deaths worldwide than those caused by being underweight. The Centers for Disease Control recently reported an estimated 1 in 5 children in the United States, ages 12-18, are living with prediabetes — increasing their risk of…
News • Boosting the microbiome
A vaccine against chronic inflammatory diseases
In animals, a vaccine modifying the composition and function of the gut microbiota provides protection against the onset of chronic inflammatory bowel diseases and certain metabolic disorders, such as diabetes and obesity. This research was conducted by the team of Benoît Chassaing, Inserm researcher at Institut Cochin (Inserm/CNRS/Université de Paris), whose initial findings have been…
News • Cesarean consequences
C-section increases obesity risk? False alarm, says new study
Women who have C-sections are no more likely to have children who develop obesity than women who give birth naturally, according to a large study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden published in the journal PLOS Medicine. The findings contradict several smaller studies that did find an association between C-section deliveries and offspring obesity but did not consider the numerous…
Article • Surgery to reduce obesity-related mortality
When diet and excercise alone are not enough
Obesity not only means someone is overweight but, over time, they will probably suffer sequelae that increasingly impair quality of life and are potentially fatal – these include hypertension, coronary heart disease, type two diabetes, pulmonary function disorders, tumours, plus an increased risk during surgery and anaesthesia. In patients with morbid obesity, class three obesity, according to…
News • Fast Food study
More burger joints, more heart attacks
Areas with a higher number of fast food restaurants have more heart attacks, according to research presented at the 67th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand (CSANZ). The study also found that for every additional fast food outlet, there were four additional heart attacks per 100,000 people each year. Study author Tarunpreet Saluja of the University of…
News • Subgroup detected
A new Diabetes classification?
The traditional classification of diabetes, mainly in type 1 and type 2 diabetes, has been challenged by studies from Scandinavia. In the current issue of The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, researchers from DDZ together with colleagues from DZD and University of Lund published a cluster analysis of diabetes allowing for phenotyping into subgroups, which extended the findings by showing that…
News • Finnish Disease Heritage
Finnish people's unique genetic makeup offers clues to diseases
A new study harnessed the unique genetic history of the people of Finland to identify variations in DNA that might predispose certain individuals to disease, whether or not they are Finnish themselves.
