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Better than BMI: More accurate way to determine adolescent obesity

A new study published today in the  Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics  shows that tri-ponderal mass index estimates body fat more accurately than the traditional BMI in adolescents. These new findings are timely as diagnosing, treating and tracking the prevalence of children and adolescents with obesity is a high public health priority. Moreover, many school districts are sending home report cards labeling adolescents as overweight -- a practice that has been controversial because children and adolescents tend to be more vulnerable to weight bias and fat shaming than adults. "Treating obesity in adolescents requires an accurate diagnosis first," said lead scientist Courtney Peterson, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the School of Health Professions at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "We found that TMI is both more accurate and easier to use than BMI percentiles. These new findings have the power to potentially change the way we diagnos...

Popular weight-loss surgery puts patients at high risk for alcohol problems

The finding -- reported online today in   Surgery for Obesity a nd Related Diseases , the journal of the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery -- indicates that bariatric surgery patients should receive long-term clinical follow-up to monitor for and treat alcohol use disorder, which includes alcohol abuse and dependence. "We knew there was an increase in the number of people experiencing problems with alcohol within the first two years of surgery, but we didn't expect the number of affected patients to continue to grow throughout seven years of follow-up," said lead author Wendy C. King, Ph.D., associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. She and her team discovered that 20.8 percent of participants developed symptoms of alcohol use disorder within five years of Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB). In contrast, only 11.3 percent of patients who underwent gastric banding reported problem alcohol use. ...

Switching to a low-glycemic diet may stop age-related eye disease, study suggests

Researchers at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University also believe that the study, published in  PNAS , points to potential biomarkers of AMD. These can be used to predict when a person is at risk for this disease, which is the leading cause of vision loss in adults over the age of 50. In early stages, AMD results in blurred vision. In advanced stages , AMD can make life very challenging. The National Eye Institute estimates that the number of people with AMD will double by 2050, from 2.07 million to 5.44 million. In the United States, white Americans are most likely to develop AMD and, in 2010, 2.5 percent of white adults aged 50 and older had AMD. The disease is typically diagnosed only when vision loss has already begun. Unfortunately, there is no cure. Using an aged mouse model, the researchers randomized 59 mice into two groups: 19 low-glycemic fed mice and 40 high-glycemic fed mice. The diets differed only in carbohydrate sourc...

Inflammatory signature of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease

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Wholesome liver (left) and diseased liver (proper) with infiltrated CD8 T-cells indicated by arrow. Credit score: Rohit Kohli, MBBS, MS, Youngsters's Hospital Los Angeles A crew of investigators led by Rohit Kohli, MBBS, MS, of Youngsters's Hospital Los Angeles, has recognized key inflammatory cells concerned in nonalcoholic fatty liver illness. Present therapy for the dysfunction entails adjustments to food plan, but no remedy has been authorised for therapy. Findings from this research present a possible therapeutic goal and provide the chance for creating a therapy. The research will probably be printed on Might 16 within the journal  Hepatology Communications . "The rise in weight problems has led to an epidemic of fatty liver illness in each kids and adults," mentioned Kohli, head of the division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Vitamin at CHLA. "Nonetheless, solely a smaller variety of these people will dev...

Breast cancer risk is more affected by total body fat than abdominal fat

Body fat is a known risk factor for postmenopausal breast cancer but whether there is an increased risk from fat specifically accumulated around the stomach is unclear. In recent years, belly fat has been reported to raise the risk of several conditions including cardiovascular disease, type-2 diabetes and colorectal cancer. Increased levels of several blood markers, including sex hormones, testosterone and oestrogen, the "fullness hormone," leptin, and inflammatory f actors, are associated with breast cancer risk. Some research has suggested that these markers are mainly produced in fat localised to the belly while other work has shown that weight loss is associated with changes in blood levels of breast cancer markers. Taken together these findings seem to suggest that body fat could have an important effect on breast cancer markers. In this study, carried out by researchers at the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands, 243 overweight, postmenopausal wo...

'Healthy' obese people still at higher risk of cardiovascular disease events than general population

People with metabolically healthy obesity (MHO) are clinically obese in terms of their body mass index (BMI) (more than 30 kg/m2), but do not have metabolic complications that usually come with obesity, such as abnormal blood fats, poor blood sugar control or diabetes, and high blood pressure. Whether MHO is associated with excess risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) events is a subject of debate. Important limitations in the evidence to date include inconsistent definitions of metabolic health, inconsistent control for other factors (confounders), and small sample sizes. In this new study, the authors address these limitations in a large contemporary cohort , based on linked primary care electronic health records. The researchers used linked electronic health records from 1995 to 2015 in The Health Improvement Network (THIN) -- a large UK database of general practice records -- to assemble a cohort of 3.5 million individuals aged 18 years or older and initially free from CVD. To d...

Regular physical activity and reduced sedentary time reduces build-up of dangerous liver fat

The role of exercise in the prevention and treatment of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), a consequence of obesity, is well established. Until more recently, previous research has focused on the therapeutic benefit of increased moderate-vigorous activity, as opposed to habitual physical activity. In this study, the authors investigated the influence of habitual physical activity on metabolic health and in particular, the amount of liver fat. The authors recruited volunteers for their study using local advertisements. People could volunteer for the study with any level of physical activity, male or female. They needed to be aged 18-60 years, and be non-smokers. It was also required that they have no history of diabetes, cardiovascular, kidney, respiratory or endocrine disease. A total of 75 healthy people (mean age 35 years old, mean BMI 25 kg/m²) were recruited for the study. They underwent comprehensive assessments of physical activity patterns using a SenseWear armba...