Weight

Research may provide new link between soft drinks and weight gain

A University of Cincinnati (UC) study provides new evidence that drinking large amounts of beverages containing fructose adds body fat, and might explain why sweetening with fructose could be even worse than using other sweeteners. Researchers allowed mice to freely consume either water, fructose sweetened water or soft drinks. They found increased body fat in the mice that drank the fruct...

Leptin-signaling Protein Maintains Normal Body Weight And Energy Balance In Mice

32% increase of African fish supply needed by 2020 just to maintain consumption levels Calling fisheries critical for nourishing the poor and for helping Africa cope with the health, economic and social devastation of problems like HIV and AIDS, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), the WorldFish Center and partners are making an urgent appeal to boost the continent's fish...

Weight control protein may yield antiobesity drugs

A weight control protein with a key role in the brain's ability to monitor body fat content may yield new approaches for treating obesity and type 2 diabetes, according to a new report in the August issue of Cell Metabolism. The findings in mice further suggest that particular variants of the protein SH2-B might underlie obesity in humans, the researchers said. SH2-B, which has multiple fu...

Eating, body weight regulated by specific neurons

In findings with implications for pandemic influenza, a new study reports for the first time that a less-virulent strain of avian influenza virus can spread from poultry to humans. The research appears in the October 1 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online. Crossing the species barrier is an important step in the development of a flu virus with pandemic potenti...

An essential regulator of body weight revealed

Scientists are one step closer to unraveling the complex mechanisms in the brain that regulate body weight. Working with mice -- whose appetites are controlled by systems very similar to those in humans -- they have identified a specific type of neuron that is essential for feeding behavior. Without these neurons, adult mice stop eating and undergo rapid weight loss. Remarkably, the rese...

Engineers discover why toucan beaks are models of lightweight strength

As a boy growing up in Brazil 40 years ago, Marc A. Meyers marveled at the lightweight toughness of toucan beaks that he occasionally found on the forest floor. Now a materials scientist and professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCSD's Jacobs School of Engineering, Meyers said makers of airplanes and automobiles may benefit from the first ever detailed engineering analysis of touca...

Weighting cancer drugs to make them hit tumors harder

Scientists have devised a blueprint for boosting anti-cancer drugs' effectiveness and lowering their toxicity by attaching the equivalent of a lead sinker onto the drugs. This extra weight makes the drugs penetrate and accumulate inside tumors more effectively. Chemotherapy drugs often fall short of achieving their full impact because the drugs diffuse in and out of the tumor too rapidly,...

It's not fair! We are programmed to resist weight loss

Research confirming the human body is designed to strongly resist attempts to lose weight will be presented at an international gathering of obesity experts hosted by QUT this week. Queensland University of Technology appetite regulation and energy balance researcher Dr Neil King, from the Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation (IHBI), said our bodies have strong mechanisms to defe...

Just like us, social stress prompts hamsters to overeat, gain weight

Put a mouse or a rat under stress and what does it do? It stops eating. Humans should be so lucky. When people suffer nontraumatic stress they often head for the refrigerator, producing unhealthy extra pounds. When Syrian hamsters, which are normally solitary, are placed in a group-living situation, they also gain weight. So scientists at the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience at Georgia S...

Very low birth weight linked to reduced quality of life in pre-school children

Babies with very low birth weights tend to have a much lower quality of life when they are three or four years old, according to a study published in the latest issue of the UK-based Journal of Advanced Nursing. Researchers assessed 118 children who had birth weights of 1500g or less and compared them with a control group of 170 born at normal weights to compare their quality of life when...

76 percent of workers older than 60 years of age are overweight or obese

76% of workers older than 60 years of age are overweight or obese. However, less than one third of those 40 years of age and younger suffer these health issues. This is one of the conclusions shown in the research of Alberto Cordero of the School of Medicine, and the University Hospital, published in the [Spanish...

Brown seaweed contains promising fat fighter, weight reducer

The study, which was directed by Scripps Research Professor Benjamin Cravatt, Ph.D., is being published in the September 8 issue of The Journal of Biological Chemistry. The new study describes a pathway-different than the one previously suggested-for the biosynthesis of neurotransmitter lipids, N-acyl ethanolamines (NAEs), which include the endogenous cannabinoid ("endocannabinoid") ananda...

Weighty viruses

Viruses are the simplest life forms on our planet, consisting of only DNA or RNA and a shell. After the prokaryotes (bacteria and archebacteria), viruses are the second most common type of organism. In our oceans they are the most common life form. In order to gain a better understanding of the structure and characteristics of these genetically varied little organisms, it would be highly useful t...

Underweight women at greater risk of miscarriage

Women who have a low body mass index before they become pregnant are 72% more likely to suffer a miscarriage in the first three months of pregnancy, but can reduce their risk significantly by taking supplements and eating fresh fruit and vegetables, according to study findings published online today. These are some of the findings of a new study, which appears today in the online edition o...

Scripps research team discovers a chemical pathway that causes mice to overeat and gain weight

The Scripps Research team, led by neuroscientists Manuel Sanchez-Alavez and Tamas Bartfai, discovered that mice genetically altered to lack a molecule known as the EP3 receptor tend to be more active during their normal sleep cycle and to eat more. In the study, this led to weight increases of up to 30 percent relative to mice with the receptors. The EP3 receptor is one of four types of r...

Male owls pitch their hoots to advertise body weight to competitors

Why do male owls hoot? Researchers from the Centre d'Études Biologiques de Chizé (France) and the University of Sussex (UK) have studied the vocal communication of male European Scops owls, one of the smallest living species of nocturnal raptors. The study, published in the April issue of the American Naturalist, was conducted between June 2003 and June 2005 on the isle of Oléron, off the west co...

How to lose weight and not go hungry: HU researcher develops drug that mimics feeling of 'fullness'

Millions of people the world over suffer today from obesity, yet there is no “magic bullet” that has yet provided a universally accepted solution. However, a young researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem feels he has come up with a practical weight loss solution for the obese person without his having to...