Older obese men could shift excess weight by taking testosterone supplements, suggest findings announced at the European Congress on Obesity. In a study, hormone-deficient men were given testosterone supplements in a similar way to HRT for older women. Men lost an average of 16kg over five years when testosterone levels were increased back to normal. But experts warn that supplements may not be the answer due to possible risks of prostate cancer and heart disease. Prof Richard Sharpe from the University of Edinburgh Centre for Reproductive Health said: "The notion that this is a quick fix for obese older men is, as always, simplistic. It is far more sensible and safer for men to reduce their food intake, reduce their obesity, which will then elevate their own testosterone." The findings announced at the conference also suggest that raising testosterone levels could reduce waist circumference and blood pressure. Dr Farid Saad, lead author of the study said: "We came across this by accident. These men were being given testosterone for a hormone deficiency - they had a range of problems - erectile dysfunction, fatigue and lack of energy. BBC © 2012

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States; Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 16768 - Posted: 05.09.2012

By DENISE GRADY Obesity and the form of diabetes linked to it are taking an even worse toll on America’s youths than medical experts had realized. As obesity rates in children have climbed, so has the incidence of Type 2 diabetes, and a new study adds another worry: the disease progresses more rapidly in children than in adults and is harder to treat. “It’s frightening how severe this metabolic disease is in children,” said Dr. David M. Nathan, an author of the study and director of the diabetes center at Massachusetts General Hospital. “It’s really got a hold on them, and it’s hard to turn around.” Before the 1990s, this form of diabetes was hardly ever seen in children. It is still uncommon, but experts say any increase in such a serious disease is troubling. There were about 3,600 new cases a year from 2002 to 2005, the latest years for which data is available. The research is the first large study of Type 2 diabetes in children, “because this didn’t used to exist,” said Dr. Robin Goland, a member of the research team and co-director of the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. She added, “These are people who are struggling with something that shouldn’t happen in kids who are this young.” Why the disease is so hard to control in children and teenagers is not known. The researchers said that rapid growth and the intense hormonal changes at puberty might play a part. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment; Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development
Link ID: 16725 - Posted: 04.30.2012

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR Researchers have succeeded in predicting eating behavior and levels of sexual desire. Forty-eight female students at Dartmouth underwent functional magnetic resonance brain scans while looking at pictures of food, animals, nature scenes and people in sexual and nonsexual activities. The scientists measured activity in the nucleus accumbens, a part of the brain thought to play a role in reward and pleasure. The women were asked to press a key if a picture included a person, but this was only as a distraction — they were unaware of the experiment’s purpose. Women whose brains demonstrated greater activity in response to pictures of food were more likely to have gained weight six months later than those whose brains did not respond to the pictures. Greater brain activity in response to sexual images was linked to higher levels of sexual desire, as described by the women. Brain activity was also significantly higher in the 22 women who reported having sex in the following six months, compared with the 26 who did not. There was no correlation of these behaviors with responses to any other pictures. “What’s novel here is that we can actually make predictions about behavior based on brain activity,” said Kathryn E. Demos, the lead author and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Brown. With undesirable behaviors, she added, “these individual differences could give us clues to work on in developing treatments.” The study was in the Journal of Neuroscience last week. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases; Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Link ID: 16701 - Posted: 04.24.2012

By Nathan Seppa Neighborhood amenities such as green space and a nearby grocery store may offer residents more than just curb appeal. Children who live in such neighborhoods are roughly half as likely to be obese as kids living in areas lacking these features, researchers report in two studies in the May American Journal of Preventive Medicine. The research combines two health aspects of residential life that studies usually examine separately — neighborhood amenities that boost physical activity and ready access to a grocery store in place of fast food outlets. The new studies “are important contributions to the needed evidence documenting the influence of environmental factors on people's health, in particular obesity,” says Laura Kettel Khan, a nutritionist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. To assess those effects, Lawrence Frank, an urban planner and public health researcher at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and his colleagues rated the “built environment” of hundreds of neighborhoods in San Diego County, Calif., and King County, Wash., which includes Seattle. The researchers rated the number and quality of parks and a neighborhood’s “walkability” — whether its layout had a low level of sprawl, few cul-de-sacs and easy access to retail outlets. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Link ID: 16683 - Posted: 04.21.2012

By LINDA LEE A Field Notes column last Sunday (“Bridal Hunger Games”) reported on some diets that brides use to drop 15 or 20 pounds before their weddings: Weight Watchers and a personal fitness trainer, juice cleanses, the Dukan diet, diet pills, hormone shots and, new to the United States, a feeding tube diet. Readers began to respond as soon as the article went online and was posted on the Times’s Facebook page. “If you’re with someone who wants a swimsuit model for a partner, then he is free to contact Sports Illustrated and ask to date one directly,” one woman wrote on Facebook. Or why not just buy a larger size dress, asked one reader, a man. Several commenters suggested that the solution to looking good in wedding photos wasn’t losing weight, but acquiring skills in Photoshop. There were complaints about the commodification of marriage: “Just one more example of the disgusting spectacle weddings have become,” another grumped. A man jokingly suggested reverse psychology: “I say balloon up so you look as big as a house on your wedding day (wear a fat suit if you have to).” Ten years later, he wrote, people “will say admiringly how great you look today.” BluePrintCleanse’s Web site was mentioned in the column for suggesting that a bridal party cleanse together. “If a friend asked me to lose weight, or join her in such an awful venture, to be in her wedding, she wouldn’t be my friend any longer,” a woman wrote. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Link ID: 16682 - Posted: 04.21.2012

By LINDA LEE JENNIFER DERRICK’S weight had crept to 159 pounds from 125, and she knew she would not fit into her grandmother’s wedding dress. “Women were smaller back then, and there was nothing to let out,” said Ms. Derrick, of Rockford, Ill. She took prescription pills, had vitamin B shots and made weekly $45 visits to a Medithin clinic in Janesville, Wis. When she married on March 18, she was back to 125 pounds; the gown, from 1938, fit perfectly. In March, Jessica Schnaider, 41, of Surfside, Fla., was preparing to shop for a wedding gown by spending eight days on a feeding tube. The diet, under a doctor’s supervision, offered 800 calories a day while she went about her business, with a tube in her nose. A 2007 Cornell University study by Lori Neighbors and Jeffery Sobal found that 70 percent of 272 engaged women said they wanted to lose weight, typically 20 pounds. So brides are increasingly going on crash diets, inspired by seeing celebrities like Sarah Jessica Parker or Gwyneth Paltrow, cowed by the prospect of wearing a revealing and expensive gown and knowing that wedding photos (if not the marriage) are forever. In the two months of fittings before most clients’ weddings at Kleinfeld Bridal in New York, seamstresses are kept busy taking in gowns. Brides-to-be say, “I don’t want the size 16, I want the 14 or the 12,’ ” said Jennette Kruszka, Kleinfeld’s marketing director. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Link ID: 16681 - Posted: 04.21.2012

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS Some people respond to exercise by eating more. Others eat less. For many years, scientists thought that changes in hormones, spurred by exercise, dictated whether someone’s appetite would increase or drop after working out. But now new neuroscience is pointing to another likely cause. Exercise may change your desire to eat, two recent studies show, by altering how certain parts of your brain respond to the sight of food. In one study, scientists brought 30 young, active men and women to a lab at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo for two experimental sessions, where they draped their heads in functional M.R.I. coils. The researchers wanted to track activity in portions of the brain known as the food-reward system, which includes the poetically named insula, putamen and rolandic operculum. These brain regions have been shown to control whether we like and want food. In general, the more cells firing there, the more we want to eat. But it hasn’t been clear how exercise alters the food-reward network. To find out, the researchers had the volunteers either vigorously ride computerized stationary bicycles or sit quietly for an hour before settling onto the M.R.I. tables. Each volunteer then swapped activities for their second session. Immediately afterward, they watched a series of photos flash onto computer screens. Some depicted low-fat fruits and vegetables or nourishing grains, while others showcased glistening cheeseburgers, ice cream sundaes and cookies. A few photos that weren’t of food were interspersed into the array. Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States; Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment; Chapter 14: Attention and Consciousness
Link ID: 16661 - Posted: 04.17.2012

By RONI CARYN RABIN, Reporter Tammy Kwarciak, a 44-year-old nurse whose weight had been creeping up for years, was determined to lose 50 pounds. So in February, she drove from her home in Port Huron, Mich., across the border into Canada and had a small balloonlike device inserted into her stomach. The intragastric balloon, filled with liquid and left in the stomach for up to six months, is not approved for use in the United States, though it’s available in Europe, South America and other parts of the world. Clinical trials required to win federal Food and Drug Administration approval are being initiated, but many Americans aren’t waiting. Since the balloon’s introduction in Canada in 2006, people like Mrs. Kwarciak have been streaming north in growing numbers. Drawn by the relative ease of balloon placement, Americans account for nearly a third of patients undergoing the procedures in Canadian clinics just over the border. “The nice thing about the balloon is that you have such a sense of satiety,” said Mrs. Kwarciak, who has lost 25 pounds since she had the procedure. “I feel full all the time. I have to remind myself at times to eat.” But the balloon is a temporary measure, and once it is removed in a few months, she said, “I’m on my own.” The intragastric balloon appeals to people like Mrs. Kwarciak who have a significant amount of weight to lose but are not heavy enough to qualify for bariatric surgery like gastric bypass surgery and adjustable gastric band surgery. The patient is anesthetized, and the balloon is inserted through the esophagus — a relatively noninvasive procedure. It is removed after six months or so. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Link ID: 16628 - Posted: 04.10.2012

Dawn Turner Trice What makes some people look at, say, a cupcake and hardly consider taking a bite, and others munch the whole thing into oblivion? We know this isn't just about willpower. How our brain responds to food when we see, smell or taste it and how we decide to act on our desire to eat is what neuroscientists are trying to unlock. Two researchers visiting Chicago recently for a conference of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society are studying what goes on in the brain across a spectrum of eating habits and disorders — from extreme overeating to anorexia. The goal is to use information about brain activity patterns to help tailor treatments for people with eating disorders. But the information can also be used for healthier people who simply want to understand better how their minds and bodies work. Laura Holsen, a neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School and Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, said eating disorders, especially anorexia, are often difficult to treat. "Prescription medication and therapies are often unsuccessful, and even when they do work it takes a long time to see results," said Holsen. "Being able to predict whether a given treatment will work better for an individual can save time, anguish and money."

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States; Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment; Chapter 14: Attention and Consciousness
Link ID: 16627 - Posted: 04.10.2012

By Laura Sanders CHICAGO — Certain brain areas are sluggish in people who eat too little and hyperactive in people who eat too much, a new study finds. The results, presented April 3 at the annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, are based on brain activity in people who ranged from dangerously thin to morbidly obese. The findings help clarify the complicated relationship between the brain and food, and may even offer ways to treat conditions such as anorexia and obesity, said study coauthor Laura Holsen of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Although scientists have looked for brain differences among particular groups of people with disordered eating habits, no previous study had compared responses to food across such a wide spectrum. “It’s important to study the extremes, because the biology is clearer in those individuals,” said psychologist Susan Carnell of the New York Obesity Nutrition Research Center, St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center and Columbia University. “That helps us understand normal weight variation.” One of five groups studied by the researchers consisted of people with anorexia, defined as being 85 percent or less of a healthy weight. A second group enlisted people who formerly had anorexia but had recovered to a healthy weight. Healthy people with a normal weight formed the third group; the fourth was composed of people who were obese. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Link ID: 16619 - Posted: 04.07.2012

By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News The obesity problem in the US may be much worse than previously thought, according to researchers. They said using the Body Mass Index or BMI to determine obesity was underestimating the issue. Their study, published in the journal PLoS One, said up to 39% of people who were not currently classified as obese actually were. The authors said "we may be much further behind than we thought" in tackling obesity. BMI is a simple calculation which combines a person's height and weight to give a score which can be used to diagnose obesity. Somebody with a BMI of 30 or more is classed as obese. The US Centers for Disease Control says at least one in three Americans is obese. Many more? Other ways of diagnosing obesity include looking at how much of the body is made up of fat. A fat percentage of 25% or more for men or 30% or more for women is the threshold for obesity. One of the researchers Dr Eric Braverman said: "The Body Mass Index is an insensitive measure of obesity, prone to under-diagnosis, while direct fat measurements are superior because they show distribution of body fat." BBC © 2012

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Link ID: 16606 - Posted: 04.04.2012

By Robert Bazell, Chief Science and Health Correspondent A "sensational" new finding could be the beginning of a cure for type 2 diabetes, a disease described in an editorial accompanying the research in the New England Journal of Medicine as “one of the fastest growing epidemics in human history.” Two studies find that weight loss surgery can eliminate the symptoms of type 2 diabetes in a large proportion of volunteers. That might not seem surprising, since obesity is the major risk factor for the disease. But in these studies, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented Monday at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology, many of the patients got better within weeks, days, sometimes even hours after the surgery -- long before they lost any weight. “It’s pretty amazing,” said Dr. Phil Schauer of the Cleveland Clinic, the lead author on one of the studies. Schauaer’s study divided 150 patients with out-of-control diabetes into three groups. One-third got the best drug therapy, the next gastric-banding surgery, and last gastric bypass. The goal was to get the patients’ blood sugar (measured by the A1C test familiar to diabetics) below the normal level of 6 percent. Forty-two percent of the bypass patients reached the goal after one year compared to 37 percent of the banding patients and only 12 percent on medical therapy. But those numbers “don’t even begin to show how successful this was," according to Dr. Steve Nissen, another author of the paper from the Cleveland Clinic. He points out that at the beginning of the study most of the patients were taking three or more medications to control their diabetes. But after a year almost none of the gastric-bypass patients needed medication. Forty-four percent required daily insulin injections before surgery and none did after. Diabetes is a major risk factor for heart disease. Most of the surgery patients saw their HDL, the good cholesterol, shoot way up and their artery clogging triglycerides drop sharply. © 2012 msnbc.com

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Link ID: 16577 - Posted: 03.27.2012

People who eat chocolate frequently tend to have a lower body mass index than those who don't eat it as often, U.S. researchers have found. For the study in Monday's online issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers asked 1,017 healthy men and women aged 20 to 85 how many times a week they ate chocolate. Participants also filled in questionnaires about their diet and lifestyle. Study author Dr. Beatrice Golomb, a professor in the medical department at the University of California, San Diego, advised people to feel less guilty about indulging in the sweet treat. "I joke that chocolate is my favourite vegetable," Golomb said in an email. In the study, Golomb and her colleagues concluded that adults who ate chocolate more frequently had a lower BMI than those who ate it less often. Earlier studies suggested that chocolate has beneficial effects on metabolism, which may extend to lower body mass index, the researchers said. In human experiments, chocolate showed benefits for insulin sensitivity, blood pressure and cholesterol levels. To explore how the rich dessert may help, the researchers considered factors like the saturated fat content of chocolate, calories, physical activity levels and mood. © CBC 2012

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Link ID: 16576 - Posted: 03.27.2012

By Laura Sanders Cheeseburgers pack on the pounds, but in mice a high-fat diet also packs on new nerve cells in the brain. More brain cells may seem like a good thing, but these newly sprouted cells appear to trigger weight gain in the animals, a new study finds. The results offer insight into how the brain controls weight. If the same thing happens in humans, these nerve cells may be a target for anti-obesity treatments. “This kind of work will definitely inform how we think about the underlying factors that relate to obesity,” says endocrinologist Jeffrey Flier of Harvard Medical School in Boston. There’s increasing interest, he says, in how long-term changes in brain circuitry — like new nerve cell production — affect eating and hunger. “That is going to be a very interesting frontier.” With some key exceptions, most regions in the adult brain don’t make new nerve cells. But in a small sliver of brain tissue called the median eminence, new nerve cells are born throughout life, neuroscientist Seth Blackshaw of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and colleagues report online March 25 in Nature Neuroscience. The median eminence is part of the brain’s metabolism hub known as the hypothalamus. And one signal to step up production in the median eminence, the team found, is a diet high in fat. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Link ID: 16575 - Posted: 03.26.2012

Being overweight in later life puts you at higher risk of brain decline, Korean research suggests. A study of 250 people aged between 60 and 70 found those with a high body mass index (BMI) and big waists scored more poorly in cognitive tests. The Alzheimer's Society said the research, in the journal Age and Ageing, added to evidence that excess body fat can affect brain function. Lifestyle changes can help make a difference, it said. The study looked at the relationship between fat levels and cognitive performance in adults aged 60 or over. The participants underwent BMI - a calculation based on a ratio of weight to height - and waist circumference measurements, a scan of fat stored in the abdomen and a mental test. Both a high BMI and high levels of abdominal fat were linked with poor cognitive performance in adults aged between 60 and 70. In individuals aged 70 and older, high BMI, waist circumference and abdominal body fat were not associated with low cognitive performance. The lead author of the study, Dae Hyun Yoon, said: "Our findings have important public health implications. The prevention of obesity, particularly central obesity, might be important for the prevention of cognitive decline or dementia." BBC © 2012

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment; Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development
Link ID: 16556 - Posted: 03.22.2012

Researchers believe they have identified why a mutation in a particular gene can lead to obesity. Mouse experiments suggested the body's message to "stop eating" was blocked if the animals had the mutation. The study, published in Nature Medicine, said the brain's response to appetite hormones was being disrupted. The Georgetown University Medical Center researchers hope their findings could lead to new ways to control weight. Many genes have been linked to obesity, one of them - brain-derived neurotrophic factor gene - has been shown to play a role in putting on weight in animal and some human studies. However, scientists at the Georgetown University Medical Center said the explanation for this link was unknown. In studies on mice which had been genetically modified to have the mutation, the mice consumed up to 80% more food than normal. After a meal, hormones such as insulin and leptin should tell the brain that the body is full and should stop eating. The researchers showed that in the mutated mice the message was not being passed on from the hormones in the blood to the correct part of the brain. BBC © 2012

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Link ID: 16537 - Posted: 03.19.2012

By Neil Bowdler Health reporter, BBC News New evidence has linked the environment in the womb with increased body weight in later life. Scientists found changes around the DNA at birth which may result from a mother's diet or exposure to pollution or stress. They then linked these changes to a higher Body Mass Index (BMI) in children aged about nine years of age. But the researchers say more work is needed to definitively prove the link between these changes and obesity. Details are published in the journal Plos One. Childhood or adult obesity has many causes, not least childhood or adult diet, but scientists have previously linked specific genes, such as the FTO gene, with increased body weight. Others have looked at not the genes, but associated molecular changes - what are called epigenetics - which can play a role in how a gene functions in the body, switching genes on and off. These changes are thought to be caused in part by exposure to environmental factors such as diet, stress, smoking or hormones, particularly in the womb and during early childhood. BBC © 2012

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment; Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development
Link ID: 16516 - Posted: 03.15.2012

By Tori Rodriguez Eating disorders are not just about food. That much has been clear for decades, but researchers are still working to untangle the complex psychological, cultural and physiological roots of afflictions such as binge-eating disorder (BED) and bulimia. Now a growing body of work is finding that disordered eating is connected to attention deficits and poor self-awareness. In one recent study, psychologists at Geneva University in Switzerland tested the cognitive abilities of three groups—obese individuals with BED, obese individuals without BED and a normal-weight control group. They found that obese participants had difficulties with inhibition and focusing their attention. These cognitive deficits were most severe in the BED group, which points to a “continuum of increasing inhibition and cognitive problems with increasingly disordered eating,” the authors wrote in the journal Appetite last August. A different study in the August issue of the Western Journal of Nursing Re­search found that low executive func­tion—the cognitive capacity for self-understanding and self-regulation—is correlated with both obesity and symptoms of ADHD. And several other studies have linked distraction with overeating. The study found that focusing on one’s meal was linked to eating less later in the day—although for someone with ADHD, such focus can prove challenging. Taken together, these results suggest that treatment for binge eating may need to include strengthening mental functions such as attention and self-awareness. © 2012 Scientific American

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States; Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment; Chapter 14: Attention and Consciousness
Link ID: 16515 - Posted: 03.15.2012

Eating trans fats may increase irritability and aggression, a new study suggests. "This study provides the first evidence linking dietary trans fatty acids with behavioural irritability and aggression," concludes the study by Dr. Beatrice Golomb of the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, and her colleagues. In the U.S., defence lawyers have used the so-called Twinkie defence to argue a defendant's behaviour, such as switching from a health-conscious diet to scarfing down Twinkies and other junk food, to show untreated depression had diminished an accused's capacity to tell right from wrong. Golomb and her co-authors analyzed diet surveys of 945 men and women with an average age of 57 in the U.S. and did behavioural assessments on them for the study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, a peer-reviewed online publication published by the non-profit Public Library of Science (PLoS). Eating more trans fats was significantly associated with repercussions for others after taking factors including education, smoking and alcohol use into account, the researchers said. "If the association between trans fats and aggressive behaviour proves to be causal, this adds further rationale to recommendations to avoid eating trans fats, or including them in foods provided at institutions like schools and prisons, since the detrimental effects of trans fats may extend beyond the person who consumes them to affect others," Golomb said. © CBC 2012

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States; Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment; Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 16514 - Posted: 03.15.2012

SILVER SPRING, Md. — A panel of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration overwhelmingly backed approval for a highly anticipated anti-obesity pill called Qnexa, a drug which the FDA previously rejected due to safety concerns. The FDA panel of outside physicians voted 20-2 Wednesday in favor of the weight loss drug from Vivus Inc., setting the stage for a potential comeback for a drug that has been plagued by safety questions since it was first submitted to the agency in 2010. A majority of panelists ultimately backed the drug due to its impressive weight loss results, with most patients losing nearly 10 percent of their overall weight after a year on the drug. But the group stressed that the drugmaker must be required to conduct a large, follow-up study of the pill's effects on the heart. Studies of Qnexa show it raises heart rate and causes heart palpitations, a longtime concern with diet pills over the years. The group of experts said it is still unclear if those side effects lead to heart attack and more serious cardiovascular problems. "The potential benefits of this medication seem to trump the side effects, but in truth, only time will tell," said Dr. Kenneth Burman of the Washington Hospital Center. The FDA is not required to follow the advice of its panels, though it often does. A final decision on the drug is expected in April. In a key question, the physicians said Vivus could conduct its study after FDA approval. Conducting the study ahead of market approval would cost the company millions of dollars and take at least three more years. © 2012 msnbc.com

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Link ID: 16422 - Posted: 02.23.2012