May 5th, 2021 - Editor's note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape's Coronavirus Resource Center. The association between obesity and poor outcomes in COVID-19 are worse in men than women, with increased rates of in-hospital death, shows the largest study to date exploring the different impact of obesity between the sexes on COVID-19.   As a primary outcome, researchers looked at which class...

May 5th, 2021 - GENEVA (Reuters) - Excessive salt in food and beverages is putting people at greater risk of potentially fatal heart disease and strokes, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, issuing fresh guidelines for limiting sodium content. An estimated 11 million deaths globally are associated with poor diet each year, including 3 million attributable to high sodium intake, it said in a ...

May 4th, 2021 - Editor's note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape's Coronavirus Resource Center. The risk of severe outcomes with COVID-19 increases with excess weight in a linear manner beginning in normal body mass index ranges, with the effect apparently independent of obesity-related diseases such as diabetes and stronger among younger people and Black persons, new research shows. Risk ...

May 3rd, 2021 - Repetitive weight loss and gain in overweight or obese patients with knee osteoarthritis is associated with significantly greater cartilage and bone marrow edema degeneration than stable weight or steady weight loss, research suggests. A presentation at the OARSI 2021 World Congress outlined the results of a study using Osteoarthritis Initiative data from 2,271 individuals with knee osteoarthri...

May 3rd, 2021 - (Reuters Health) - Gastric cancer patients with diabetes who undergo conventional gastrectomy have an increased likelihood of diabetes remission with greater postoperative weight loss, independent of baseline weight, a recent study suggests. Researchers examined data on 5,150 patients with diabetes who had gastrectomy for cancer between 2004 and 2014. Overall, 25% of patients experienced diabet...

Apr 28th, 2021 - Barrett's esophagus occurred in nearly 12% of patients who underwent esophagogastroduodenoscopy after sleeve gastrectomy, but it was not associated with postoperative gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), based on data from 10 studies that totaled 680 adult patients. Sleeve gastrectomy has become more popular in recent years as an effective strategy for patients with severe obesity, wrote Bas...

Apr 28th, 2021 - Guidelines on intragastric balloons (IGBs) in the management of obesity were published in April 2021 by the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) in Gastroenterology.[1,2] For obese patients (body mass index [BMI] >30 kg/m2) desiring weight loss but for whom conventional weight-loss strategies have failed, a combination of IGB placement and moderate- to high-intensity lifestyle modific...

Apr 28th, 2021 - For 20 years, investigative journalist Gary Taubes has been turning the dogma of nutrition science upside down in a series of brilliantly detailed articles and books. Taubes' specialty is a form of historical excavation, painstakingly digging into the science and scientists who have created and sustained nearly a century's worth of failed conventional nutritional wisdom and policy. Taubes is id...

Apr 28th, 2021 - Bariatric surgery may be the most effective method of achieving type 2 diabetes remission, but it is the least favoured, suggests the results of a debate in which experts weighed the pros and cons of the main approaches. However, no matter whether patients opt for intentional weight loss, a low-carb diet or gastric bypass surgery, the experts agreed that more support for type 2 diabetes patient...

Apr 27th, 2021 - Pregnancy increases the risk for first-time symptomatic kidney stone formation which peaks close to the time of delivery but can persist even a year later, a population-based, case-controlled study suggests. "We suspected the risk of a kidney stone event would be high during pregnancy, but we were surprised that the risk remained high for up to a year after delivery," senior author Andrew Rule,...

Apr 27th, 2021 - Editor's note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape's Coronavirus Resource Center. People with psoriasis have a higher risk of infection with COVID-19 than the general population, but some systemic treatments appear to lower risk in patients, compared with those on topical therapy, a new study finds. "Our study results suggest that psoriasis is an independent risk factor for C...

Apr 26th, 2021 - Editor's note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape's Coronavirus Resource Center. In a global meta-analysis of more than 7000 patients who were hospitalized with COVID-19, individuals with overweight or obesity were more likely to need respiratory support but were not more likely to die in the hospital than individuals of normal weight. Compared to patients without diabetes, ...

Apr 26th, 2021 - Women diagnosed with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) during the COVID-19 pandemic were diagnosed later in their pregnancy than those diagnosed prior to the pandemic, suggests an audit of almost 1000 pregnancies at a leading UK hospital. GDM-related births during the COVID era were significantly more likely to be large for gestational age, delivered via caesarean section, and associated with...

Apr 25th, 2021 - Dr Santina J. G. Wheat The United States Preventive Services Task Force recently released a draft of updated recommendations for screening for prediabetes and type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM). If accepted as written, the new recommendation will be to “screen all asymptomatic adults ages 35 to 70 years who are overweight or obese.” Upon diagnosis of prediabetes, the recommendation is to offer or re...

Apr 22nd, 2021 - An updated American Heart Association scientific statement on the role of obesity in cardiovascular disease provides the first new guidance in 15 years, drawing on evidence that's emerged in that time to clarify the potential of newer drug therapies and interventions like bariatric surgery and lifestyle modifications to curtail cardiovascular disease risks. "The timing of this information is im...

Apr 22nd, 2021 - As clinicians, we are concerned about the health of our young patients with obesity and frustrated by the lack of reliable therapeutic interventions. Likewise, parents and the affected adolescents are understandably discouraged by the lack of long-term success of prescribed lifestyle changes (diet and exercise) and search instead for a quick remedy. When our young patients' weight has reached t...

Apr 21st, 2021 - (Reuters Health) - Losing just 1.5 hours of sleep a night leads to elevated systolic blood pressure in women, a small clinical trial suggests. The randomized crossover trial included metabolically healthy premenopausal (n=26) and postmenopausal women (n=10) who were not obese based ON BMI, and had at least one first-degree family member with a cardiovascular disease or CVD risk factors such as ...

Apr 20th, 2021 - Patients with cancer face an increased risk of arterial thromboembolic events, including myocardial infarction (MI) and stroke, and for some that risk appears substantial, according to a new population-based study. For example, the 6-month incidence of arterial thromboembolism (ATE) was 4.09% among men older than age 75 with diabetes and a diagnosis of bladder cancer but only 0.12% among women ...

Apr 20th, 2021 - (Reuters Health) - People with androgen insensitivity syndrome may be more likely to develop asthma, a new study suggests. Researchers examined data on the prevalence of androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS) and asthma in medical records for more than 76 million patients. Overall, the analysis included 310 patients with complete AIS and 670 patients with incomplete AIS. Compared to those withou...

Apr 20th, 2021 - In a UK cohort of more than 260,000 mostly middle-aged adults in primary care with overweight or obesity, body mass index (BMI) remained relatively stable over a decade. However, compared to overweight individuals, those with severe (class 3) obesity were more socioeconomically disadvantaged and had triple the risk for incident heart failure or all-cause or cardiovascular disease (CVD)–related ...