Obesity News and Research

Latest Obesity News and Research

Wireless medical device might help with weight loss

Gastric bypass surgery is sometimes the last resort for those who struggle with obesity or have serious health-related issues due to their weight.

8 Jan 2021

Researchers develop new statistical method that generates significant genetic insights

Pleiotropy analysis, which provides insight on how individual genes result in multiple characteristics, has become increasingly valuable as medicine continues to lean into mining genetics to inform disease treatments. Privacy stipulations, though, make it difficult to perform comprehensive pleiotropy analysis because individual patient data often can't be easily and regularly shared between sites.

8 Jan 2021

Gut and oral microbiomes predict COVID-19 severity

One question that continues to remain unanswered during the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has been why is there a distinctive hit-and-miss pattern when it comes to severe disease? An interesting new study that appears on the medRxiv* preprint server pinpoints one highly relevant risk factor: the state of the oral and gut microbiomes.

7 Jan 2021

Study reveals racial-ethnic inequities among people with type 1 diabetes and COVID-19

Black and Hispanic people with COVID-19 and diabetes are more likely than Caucasians to die or have serious complications, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

7 Jan 2021

ACE2 receptor is responsible for the wide host range of SARS-CoV-2

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is thought to have a zoonotic origin, perhaps originating in a bat coronavirus with an unknown intermediate host. It is not only very infectious but has been found to infect a wide range of mammals, including dogs, cats, ferrets, hamsters, and minks, besides non-human primates. This range may be still higher, claims a recent preprint that appeared in January 2021 on the bioRxiv server.

6 Jan 2021

Sons born to overweight mothers are more likely to be diagnosed with infertility

A recent study published in Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica found that sons born to mothers who fell within the overweight range were more likely to be diagnosed with infertility during adulthood than sons of mothers with normal-range weight.

6 Jan 2021

New mathematical model proposes optimal treatment strategies for COVID-19

Getting control of COVID-19 will take more than widespread vaccination; it will also require a better understanding of why the disease causes no apparent symptoms in some people but leads to rapid multi-organ failure and death in others, as well as better insight into what treatments work best and for which patients.

5 Jan 2021

Thyroid cancer linked to in-utero exposures, study shows

A recent study by prof. Tone Bjørge, University of Bergen, and her team shows that thyroid cancer is related to in-utero exposures.

5 Jan 2021

Middle-aged adults with comorbidities high-risk category for COVID-19-related mortality in Mexican study

Researchers from Mexico demonstrate how they calculated age-stratified COVID-19 case fatality rates, years of life lost (YLL), and relative risk for 9 comorbidities and 23 comorbidity combinations in a retrospective study.

5 Jan 2021

Sweetened beverage sales bounced back following the repeal of Cook County tax

Following the repeal of the short-lived Cook County, Illinois Sweetened Beverage Tax, sales of sweetened beverages went right back to where they were before the tax went into place, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago. The study is published in JAMA Network Open.

4 Jan 2021

Few organisms in the gut microbiome found to play a key role in type 2 diabetes

Researchers at Oregon State University have found that a few organisms in the gut microbiome play a key role in type 2 diabetes, opening the door to possible probiotic treatments for a serious metabolic disease affecting roughly one in 10 Americans.

4 Jan 2021

People with detectable brown fat less likely to suffer cardiac and metabolic conditions

Brown fat is that magical tissue that you would want more of. Unlike white fat, which stores calories, brown fat burns energy and scientists hope it may hold the key to new obesity treatments.

4 Jan 2021

Scientists discover cell responsible for triggering chronic, low-level inflammation in fat tissue

When fat cells in the body are stuffed with excess fat, the surrounding tissue becomes inflamed. That chronic, low-level inflammation is one of the driving factors behind many of the diseases associated with obesity.

4 Jan 2021

Brain damage is not caused by direct COVID-19 attack, indicates study

n an in-depth study of how COVID-19 affects a patient's brain, National Institutes of Health researchers consistently spotted hallmarks of damage caused by thinning and leaky brain blood vessels in tissue samples from patients who died shortly after contracting the disease.

3 Jan 2021

Phase 3 trial of Novavax COVID-19 vaccine candidate begins enrolling volunteers

The Phase 3 trial of another investigational coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine has begun enrolling adult volunteers.

28 Dec 2020

Higher BMI linked to increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection

Researchers at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, USA, revealed that the spike-specific immunoglobulin G antibodies in obese people are negatively associated with body mass index (BMI) and serum levels of proinflammatory and metabolic markers of pulmonary inflammation.

24 Dec 2020

Health disparities in cancer and COVID-19 are caused by similar factors

Income level, employment, housing location, medical insurance, education, tobacco and alcohol use, diet and obesity, access to medical care. These are some of the factors causing worse cancer outcomes in people who are Black.

23 Dec 2020

Genetic analysis reveals novel traits associated with COVID-19 severity

Researchers in the United States have conducted genetic correlation studies revealing novel traits associated with the development of severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

23 Dec 2020

Research shows how colanic acid extends lifespan in C. elegans

Baylor College of Medicine researcher Meng Wang had already shown that bacteria that make a metabolite called colanic acid (CA) could extend the lifespan of worms in her lab by as much as 50%, but her collaboration with Rice University synthetic biologist Jeffrey Tabor is providing tools to answer the bigger question of how the metabolite imparts longer life.

22 Dec 2020

Cancer survivors have greater risk of developing and dying from subsequent primary cancers

A new American Cancer Society study finds that adult-onset cancer survivors run a greater risk of developing and dying from subsequent primary cancers (SPCs) than the general population.

22 Dec 2020