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Can childhood obesity be prevented before conception?

The first-ever Cleveland-based study will explore whether an exercise and nutrition program designed for mothers before they conceive will result in less childhood obesity. "Until now, similar intervention programs, which have only had limited success, were introduced after women became pregnant," said co-principal investigator Patrick M. Catalano, MD, professor of reproductive biology at Case Western Reserve and director of Reproductive Health and Clinical Research at MetroHealth. "To our knowledge, this is the first study that seeks to prevent childhood obesity before a planned pregnancy. Our hypothesis is that interventions after women become pregnant are too late to see the kinds of meaningful improvements in child and maternal health everyone is looking for." Through nutrition, exercise, and education, the Lifestyle Intervention in Preparation for Pregnancy program (LIPP) will seek to reduce body fat and improve glucose and lipid metabolism in overweight...

Giving brown fat a green light

The investigators have shown that a lipid (a fat-like substance) called 12,13-diHOME that circulates in the blood signals brown fat cells in mice to fuel up with other lipids, says Matthew Lynes, a Joslin postdoctoral researcher and lead author on a paper describing the work in the journal  Nature Medicine . In one experiment, obese mice given low levels of the molecule produced reduced levels of blood triglycerides -- other forms of lipids that can increase risks for heart disease and diabetes in humans. Although the Joslin team hasn't shown that 12,13-diHOME also triggers brown fat activation in humans, the lipid could aid research by acting as a biomarker for the process, notes Yu-Hua Tseng, Ph.D., a Joslin principal investigator and senior author on the paper. Today, researchers in the field must detect brown fat activation by injecting volunteers with tiny amounts of radioactive glucose and scanning them via positron emission tomography (PET), which is a difficult and exp...

Early-life BPA exposure reprograms gene expression linked to fatty liver disease

NAFLD is a buildup of extra fat in liver cells that is not caused by alcohol and that can lead to cirrhosis, or scarring, of the liver. This common disease occurs more often in people with obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol or high triglycerides (blood fats). BPA is an industrial chemical found in polycarbonate plastics, such as many food and beverage containers, and in epoxy resins that line food cans. Past studies show that BPA and many other chemicals in our environment are endocrine-disrupting chemicals that can interfere with the body's hormones and eventually lead to obesity and other diseases. "We believe this disease risk occurs via developmental reprogramming of the epigenome , which can persist throughout a lifetime," said the study's lead investigator, Lindsey TreviƱo, Ph.D., an instructor and researcher at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas. "These persistent changes lead to alterations in gene expression in ways that correlate with in...

Magnetic brain stimulation causes weight loss by making gut bacteria healthier

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Artist's conception of micro organism and viruses. (inventory picture) Credit score: © Jezper / Fotolia A brand new examine finds noninvasive electromagnetic mind stimulation method helps overweight individuals shed some pounds, partly by altering the composition of their intestinal micro organism -- the so-called intestine microbiota. Outcomes of the method, referred to as deep transcranial magnetic stimulation (dTMS), shall be offered Sunday at ENDO 2017, the Endocrine Society's 99th annual assembly in Orlando, Fla. This examine expands on the researchers' earlier discovering that dTMS decreased meals cravings and induced weight reduction in overweight people. Not like deep mind stimulation, dTMS doesn't want an operation or implantation of electrodes. As a substitute, an electromagnetic coil is positioned on the scalp and sends magnetic pulses to stimulate particular deep areas of the mind. At the moment accepted...

Brain signals after a meal respond to food pictures more in obese than lean kids

A clinical trial at Seattle Children's Research Institute and University of Washington found that the brain responded to images of high-calorie foods differently in obese children who had just eaten than in those whose weight was normal. Called Brain Activation and Satiety in Children Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (BASIC fMRI), the study uses functional MRI (fMRI), a type of MRI that indirectly measures activities in different brain areas, said Christian Roth, M.D., a pediatric endocrinologist and researcher at the research institute, who is overseeing the trial. "Our aim is to understand why some children with obesity still feel hungry after eating a meal," Roth said. "We want to better understand this tendency to overeat and gain insight into the brain signals causing it. Without a better understanding of the biological responses in the brain related to food intake, we may be unable to slow the childhood obesity epidemic." For the trial, which w...

Being overweight at any point in adulthood increases risk for death

Researchers from the Boston University School of Public Health and the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health sought to investigate the relationship between maximum BMI (body mass index) over time and subsequent mortality. The researchers assessed maximum BMI for more than 225,000 participants across 16 years of weight history in three large prospective studies and then examined deaths that occurred within an average of 12 years of follow-up. The analysis found that people with a maximum BMI in the overweight or obese categories were at elevated risk for all-cause death, as well as death from cardiovascular disease, cancer and respiratory disease. The highest risk for death occurred among participants who had significant drops in weight, which the authors said most likely reflected unintentional weight loss caused by illness. The authors say that these findings are important from a public health perspective, given that about one-third of adults in the U.S. and more than a quarter...

Race ranks higher than pounds in diabetes, heart-health risks

Similarly, Americans of Hispanic descent were 80 percent more likely than whites to suffer from so-called cardio-metabolic abnormalities that give rise to heart disease, stroke and diabetes, compared with 50 percent more likely for those who were Chinese and African-American. These risks include high blood pressure (hypertension), elevated glucose , low HDL, the "good cholesterol," and high triglycerides, a fat found in blood. In the study, participants who were aged between 45 and 84, were classified as having cardio-metabolic abnormalities if they had two or more of these four risk factors. The study, publishing April 3, 2017 in  Annals of Internal Medicine , included 803 South Asian residents of San Francisco Bay and Chicago areas, who traced their ancestry to India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka. Also enrolled in a parallel study were approximately 6,000 residents of New York, Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Winston-Salem areas, ...