EurekAlert!'s most-viewed news release from 2012 focused on a breakthrough in the treatment of obesity and related diseases using a combination of hormones, tested in mice, that resulted in weight loss and lowered blood sugar without negative side effects.
The theme of obesity was prominent in three other most-viewed news releases on EurekAlert! during 2012.. Other topics were mental health, neuroscience, marine conservation, human behavioral science, and progress toward a male contraceptive pill.
Web traffic statistics gathered during 2012 identified the 10 most-viewed releases on EurekAlert!. The No. 1 most-visited release captured more than 232,000 hits.
Obesity a hot topic among 2012's most popular releases
The subject of obesity dominates the 10 most-visited news releases on EurekAlert! in 2012, with the first, second, fifth, and eighth ranked releases.
Obesity treatment is the focus of the first, second, and eighth releases. In the first, researchers from Indiana University and the Helmholtz Center Munich, Germany, tested a compound of two hormones estrogen and GLP-1, a digestive peptide hormone. Previous studies tested the efficacy of these hormones individually as treatments for obesity, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome, but resulted in adverse effect in mice. However, when the two hormones were used together, weight loss and glucose management were effectively achieved and without harmful or dangerous side effects, such as cancer, tumor formation, and stroke. The researchers are working toward developing a version of the hormone combination for human trials.
The fifth most-visited release describes a less invasive obesity treatment: online weight loss programs. A review of 14 weight loss studies, published in the Cochrane Library, reported that individuals participating in an online weight loss or management program lost more weight over a six-month period than people who did not receive any sort of wei
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| Contact: Jennifer Santisi jsantisi@aaas.org 202-326-6213 American Association for the Advancement of Science Source:Eurekalert |