Obesity News and Research

Latest Obesity News and Research

Florida's top nonprofits receive awards for improving health care

Today, seven of Florida's top nonprofits received awards for their work in improving the health of Florida's uninsured and underserved at The Blue Foundation for a Healthy Florida's 2009 Sapphire Award ceremony.

5 Dec 2009

Health experts available to speak about health care reform

Garson helped originate and draft the "Health Partnership Act" (S. 325 and H.R. 5606), which funds grants to states for innovations to improve coverage for the uninsured, quality and efficiency.

5 Dec 2009

Effective prevention of smoking among teenagers narrows racial disparity in lung cancer rates

Effective prevention of smoking among teenagers, particularly black teenagers, is narrowing the disparity in lung cancer rates between blacks and whites, according to a report published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. The December issue has a special focus on tobacco.

4 Dec 2009

New Center for Digestive Care to care for all aspects of digestive disease

The Center for Digestive Care at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center has been established with a mission to provide high-quality patient care, research and education for all aspects of digestive disease.

4 Dec 2009

New SPC3649 drug found effective in treating HCV infections

In a dramatic finding, a new drug for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections that targets liver cells produced a substantial drop in blood levels of the virus in animals and continued to work up to several months after treatment, say scientists at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research (SFBR) in San Antonio.

4 Dec 2009

Weight loss - an effective treatment for sleep apnoea in obese men

For obese men, a dramatic weight loss can be an effective way to improve moderate to severe sleep apnoea, scientists at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet report. Those with severe sleep apnoea when the study began benefited most from weight loss.

4 Dec 2009

New weight management charts and screening tools for childhood obesity devised

A University of Nevada, Reno professor who thinks the present weight management charts and screening tools for children are too difficult to understand and use has devised new, simpler charts that pediatricians and parents can use to help combat the increasing rates of obese and overweight children in the United States.

4 Dec 2009

Breastfeeding a child may lower a woman's risk of developing Metabolic Syndrome

Breastfeeding a child may lower a woman's risk of developing Metabolic Syndrome, a condition linked to heart disease and diabetes in women, according to a Kaiser Permanente study that was published today online ahead of print and will appear in the February issue of Diabetes, a journal of the American Diabetes Association.

4 Dec 2009

Lightlake Therapeutics granted ethical approval for gene testing subjects in obesity treatment trial

After two decades of scientifically and medically proven success in their field, Lightlake Therapeutics' experts have been granted ethical approval to begin selecting and gene testing subjects for a trial of a simple, safe and effective treatment for what the World Health Organisation has described as a global epidemic of unhealthy eating and obesity.

3 Dec 2009

Don't stop dieting during the holiday season

As Americans gear up for the holiday season this month, Dr. Sasson Moulavi, a Board Certified Bariatric Physician, cautions that overweight and obese patients not give in to temptation and forget their dieting. Rather, Dr. Sass, founder of the Smart for Life(R) Cookie Diet, recommends alternative behavior for a positive outcome when it is time to ring in the New Year.

3 Dec 2009

Breastfeeding reduces a woman's risk of developing Metabolic Syndrome

3 Dec 2009

Body needs fasting periods to stay healthy

A body that is provided with food too often gets caught up in the maelstrom of a lack of exercise, obesity and ultimately diabetes. The trigger is a molecular switch that is controlled by insulin, a new study by scientists from ETH Zurich has revealed.

3 Dec 2009

Sodexo launches 'Better Tomorrow Plan' to meet the challenges of community and environmental practices

Sodexo (PARIS:SW) (OTCBB:SDXAY), world leader in Quality of Life solutions, announced today the creation of the "Better Tomorrow Plan," designed to better respond to the challenges of proper Nutrition, Health and Wellness, Local communities and Environment.

3 Dec 2009

Breast Cancer Fund: Congress must enforce BPA ban in food and beverage containers

In the wake of the first evidence that American babies are born contaminated with a plastics chemical linked to birth defects and breast cancer, Congress must act immediately to protect infants and mothers.

3 Dec 2009

Despite declining smoking rates, U.S. obesity rates continue to rise

If obesity trends continue, the negative effect on the health of the U.S. population will overtake the benefits gained from declining smoking rates, according to a study by U-M and Harvard researchers published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

3 Dec 2009

Lung disease linked to the use of contaminated well water in a CPAP machine

Many people rely on continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machines as a safe and effective treatment for sleep apnea. But a new case report describes a rare complication—a lingering inflammatory disease of the lungs, apparently related to the use of contaminated well water in a CPAP machine. The report appears in the December Southern Medical Journal, official journal of the Southern Medical Association.

3 Dec 2009

New book presents latest research on neuroendocrine physiology

In this volume an international group of basic and clinical investigators presents their latest research on neuroendocrine physiology, advances in the control of the onset of puberty and its disorders, and basic and clinical aspects of the GH/IGF-1 and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axes. An entire section is dedicated to pituitary tumors, including genetics and neuroimaging, and another covers the neuroendocrine control of substrate metabolism, including hypothalamic obesity and anorexia.

3 Dec 2009

Exercise remains one of the most effective interventions for peripheral artery disease

Peripheral artery disease (PAD) affects 5 million individuals in the U.S. and is the leading cause of limb amputations. Doctors have long considered exercise to be the single best therapy for PAD, and now a new study helps explain why. Led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and published in this week's Online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the findings demonstrate that a protein called PGC-1alpha plays a key role in the process.

3 Dec 2009

Repeated use of ecstasy drug increases the risk of developing sleep apnea

Repeated use of the drug popularly known as "ecstasy" significantly raises the risk of developing sleep apnea in otherwise healthy young adults with no other known risk factors for the sleep disturbance, a new study by Johns Hopkins scientists suggests.

2 Dec 2009

Fruit flies use same molecular mechanisms as humans for maintaining cholestrol

More importantly, according to two new studies led by a University of Utah human geneticist, fruit flies use the same molecular mechanisms as humans to help maintain proper balances of cholesterol and a key form of stored fat that contributes to obesity. The findings mean that as researchers try to learn more about the genetic and biological processes through which people regulate cholesterol and fat metabolism, the humble fruit fly, also called Drosophila, can teach humans much about themselves.

2 Dec 2009