May 8th, 2012
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A New York Times article reports that airplane seats, designed for passengers weighing 170 pounds, may not protect overweight passengers in a crash. See NYT: scientists-ask-are-airplanes-safe-for-overweight-passengers?
May 7th, 2012
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Dr. Cynthia Ogden, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told the packed room at the Weight of the Nation Conference that, while obesity increased dramatically in the 1980s and 1990s, overall rates have remained fairly stable for the past eight years. Not all groups saw such stability however. Rates increased for African-American and lower-income boys and upper income men. So the audience was not very prepared when RTI researcher Justin Trogdon followed with his research on projections for obesity rates out to 2030. He found, just on a linear basis, that the prevalence rate for obesity would increase by 33% from 36 % to 42 % and the prevalence rate for severe obesity would increase by 130% from 6% currently to over 11 % in 2030. The paper will be published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine.
Given that the population is increasing, the higher prevalence rates represent a double whammy.
May 4th, 2012
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Ask almost anyone to name a culprit in the increase in childhood obesity and it won’t be long before marketing of foods on television to children is fingered.
Television viewing has raised three concerns: sedentary behavior during TV watching, food consumption during TV viewing, and exposure to advertisements, especially for foods high in fat, salt and sugar.
In 2010, the World Health Organization published 12 recommendations on the marketing of food and non-alcoholic beverages to children. The United Kingdom was the first country to develop scheduling restrictions of food advertisements to children.
Adams and colleagues studied exposure by children under 16 to food advertising 6 months before and 6 months after the scheduling restrictions went into effect. They found that the scheduling restrictions were widely adhered to but that the restrictions failed to reduce significantly exposure to such ads. “Indeed, they appear to have had a perverse effect of increasing exposure of all viewers to HFSS (high fat, salt, sugar) food advertising. PubMed: Effect of Restrictions on Television food advertising
May 3rd, 2012
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Huffman and colleagues looked at the American Health Association’s Strategic Impact Goals target of a 20% relative improvement in overall cardiovascular health. They looked at 35,000 cardiovascular disease-free adults in the NHANES surveys from 1999 to 2008. They found that the prevalence of smoking, hypercholesterolemia and hypertension declined, whereas the prevalence of obesity and dysglycemia increased through 2008. Projections to 2020 suggest that obesity and impaired fasting glucose/diabetes could increase to affect 43% and 77% of US men and 42% and 53% of US women. Overall, population level cardiovascular health is projected to improve only 6% overall, far below the AHA 20% target. PubMed: Cardiovascular Health Behaviors Changes and Projections
May 3rd, 2012
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What does the US have in common with Kenya, Turkey, Thailand, East Timor and Honduras? Answer: high rates – around 12% – of preterm births, according to a new study from the World Health Organization. Most European countries and Canada have rates around 7% to9%. The report notes, “Underlying maternal conditions (e.g. renal, disease, hypertension, obesity and diabetes) increase the risk of maternal complications (e.g., pre-eclampsia) and medically-indicated preterm birth. The worldwide epidemic of obesity and diabetes is, thus, likely to become an increasingly important contributor to global preterm birth. In one region in the United Kingdom, 17% of all babies born to diabetic mother were preterm, more than double the rate in the general population.
May 1st, 2012
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The Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) is a highly publicized study comparing lifestyle intervention against metformin in preventing type 2 diabetes. It has been widely used by public health authorities to promote lifestyle changes over drugs in addressing obesity and type 2 diabetes. Delahanty LM and colleagues looked at genetic polymorphisms for an effect on short term and long term weight loss and weight regain. They found that the Ala allele at PPARG (think of this as the longitude and latitude for a gene variation) was associated with short term and long term – weight loss regardless of treatment. This study adds to the literature that genetic information can help identify those who can are more likely or less likely to benefit from intervention. PubMed:Genetic Predictors of weight loss, regain DPP
In a another trial, Look AHEAD, another obesity related risk allele at FTO rs1421085 significantly predicted more eating episodes per day. Variants within BDNF were significantly associated with more servings of dairy, meat, eggs, nut and beans. Another allele was associated with a significantly lower percentage of energy from protein. PubMed:Genetic alleles and dietary intake in Look AHEAD trial
