The cost of obesity in the US

Obesity - which affects one in every three Americans - and the illnesses associated with it cost the United States some 90.7 billion dollars a year in health care costs, a University of Pennsylvania researcher said.

Among developed countries, the United States has the most obese and overweight people, representing 66 percent of its overall population.

Costs tied to excess pounds (or kilograms) account for 5.04 percent of all US health care costs.

The calculations by Professor Adam Gilden Tsai of the University of Pennsylvania, presented at a conference on obesity here Saturday, are based on a comparison of 30 previous studies on the cost of obesity for the US health care system.

Obese post-menopausal women prone to breast cancer: studies

Obese post-menopausal women are more susceptible to breast cancer, and those who continue to gain weight after 50 are more likely to die from the disease, according to research presented at an obesity conference.

"There is an overwhelming number of studies that show a link between obesity and breast cancer," Cheryl Rock of the University of California, San Diego said at the annual conference of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity (NAASO).

Marilie Gammon of the University of North Carolina warned that after menopause, obese women have a 75 percent greater chance of developing breast cancer.

She also said that women should be made aware that if they continue to add pounds past the half-century mark, they are raising their chances of death.

Indian Kids are now ready to get Sex, Drug lessons

Schools in conservative India will teach children as young as five years old about sexual health and drugs from next year to boost awareness of the dangers they face in a changing society, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.

India's national examination board is set to introduce a new program teaching pupils at kindergartens and schools about drug and sexual abuse, HIV/AIDS, hygiene and nutrition, the Times of India daily reported.

"Topics related to sexual changes at puberty, substance abuse, myths concerning the reproductive growth of a child and sexually transmitted diseases will be part of the curriculum," Usha Ram, a school principal involved in developing the program said.

Genetic mutation doubles breast cancer risk: study

British researchers said they had found a new genetic mutation that doubled the risk of breast cancer in women who carry it.

The gene, called BRIP1, helps to repair damaged DNA -- like some of the other known breast cancer genes, researchers reported in this week's issue of the journal Nature Genetics.

And, as with the BRCA2 breast cancer gene, certain mutations in BRIP1 may cause a blood disease called Fanconi anemia, reported Dr. Nazneen Rahman of the Institute of Cancer Research, in Sutton, Britain and colleagues.

"Breast cancer is approximately twice as common in sisters and mothers of affected individuals as in the general population," the researchers wrote.

Technorati Tags: Alzheimer, Neurology, Health

Food for Thought for Alzheimer's Emerges in Mediterranean Diet

A Mediterranean-style diet -- spare on red meat and heavy on fruits, vegetables, and olive oil -- may help to fend off Alzheimer's disease, according to researchers here.

The effect was strongest in people who followed a Mediterranean-type diet most religiously, reported Nikolaos Scarmeas, M.D., of Columbia University, and colleagues, in an early online release from the December issue of Archives of Neurology.

Also, the effect appeared to be independent of vascular risk factors, suggesting that the diet had non-vascular protective benefits, such as antioxidant or anti-inflammatory properties, they wrote.

In a separate study, published by Swedish researchers in the October issue of Archives of Neurology, there was also evidence that dietary supplements containing a prominent Mediterranean diet component -- omega-3 fatty acids -- may reduce the rate of cognitive decline in people with the mildest Alzheimer's disease. Omega-3 didn't seem to slow the progression of more advanced forms of the dementia, they added.

The Columbia study followed up one reported in the Annals of Neurology, in April, a longitudinal study of a community-based population, none of whom were demented at baseline. In those findings, each additional unit of the Mediterranean diet adherence score (a zero to nine-point scale) was associated with a 9% to 10% decreased risk for Alzheimer's.

Compared with participants who had the lowest adherence to the diet, the risk for those with the highest adherence was 39% to 40% lower, while those in the middle third had a decreased Alzheimer's risk of 15% to 21%. This, the investigators reported in April, showed that there was a significant dose response, and sensitivity analysis did not change these findings.

Technorati Tags: Alzheimer, Neurology, Health

Exercise alone will not prevent obesity in young: study

Exercise alone is unlikely to prevent obesity in preschoolers but it does improve their motor skills, may boost their confidence and can establish a healthy life-long habit, researchers said on Friday.

But more needs to be done to curb the rising number of overweight and obese children in many parts of the world.

"Changes in other behaviors, including diet, may also be necessary," said Professor John Reilly of the University of Glasgow in Scotland.

Childhood obesity is a growing public health problem. Medical experts have warned that the young expanding waistlines will lead to an increase in children suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure.

Reilly and his team analyzed the impact of increasing exercise in four-year-old children in Scotland to see if it would have an impact on their body mass index (BMI), which is used to determine if someone is overweight or obese, their distribution of body fat and blood pressure.

BMI is calculated by dividing weight in kilograms by height in meters squared.

Half of the 545 children from 36 nurseries took part in three 30-minute sessions of active play each week in addition to their usual activity. Parents were also encouraged to increase their children's physical activity at home.

Viagra may aggravate severe apnea

Viagra (sildenafil) taken at bedtime may worsen breathing problems in patients with severe obstructive sleep apnea, results of a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine suggest.

Obstructive sleep apnea is a common problem that occurs when the soft tissues at the back of the throat collapse and close off the airway during sleep, resulting in brief moments in which breathing stops.

Impotence, also known as erectile dysfunction, is highly prevalent in patients with obstructive sleep apnea, note Dr. Suely Roizenblatt, of Federal University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and colleagues. However, sildenafil prolongs the action of nitric oxide, which promotes upper airway congestion.

The researchers therefore examined the effects of a single 50-mg dose of sildenafil on the sleep of 14 men (average age, 53.1 years) with severe obstructive sleep apnea.

India to ask young villagers to encourage safe sex

India plans to recruit one young man and woman from every large village in the country to over the next five years teach their peers about safe sex and HIV, a health official said on Wednesday.

The army of young people would be part of India's frontline as it tries to slow the spread of the deadly virus, which already infects an estimated 5.7 million Indians -- the world's largest caseload, according to the United Nations.

"They could be weavers, or agricultural laborers or just be hanging around the village market place," said Sujatha Rao, director general of India's National Aids Control Organization.

"But the point is the distribution of condoms, and messages on radio and TV only go so far. We need to sit down with young people and make them talk," she told a conference on sexual equality.

Technorati Tags: safe sex, HIV

Diabetics risk health by not taking drugs

About 21 percent of individuals with diabetes do not regularly take their blood-sugar lowering, blood-pressure lowering or cholesterol-lowering pills, researchers found in study of 11,532 diabetes patients.

The study patients who were nonadherent to treatment had higher blood pressure, higher levels of artery-clogging LDL cholesterol and higher blood sugar levels, indicating poor diabetes control.

Importantly, Dr. P. Michael Ho of the Denver VA Medical Center and colleagues report, patients who did not adhere to their medications had a 58-percent higher odds of being hospitalized and an 81-percent higher odds of dying than those who took their medications as prescribed. This was true even after the researchers accounted for factors that may also have contributed to these outcomes.

"Incremental increases in medication adherence were associated with improved outcomes," Ho and colleagues report in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

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