Body

Philadelphia, January 10, 2019 - Alcohol is ubiquitous in Western society, and rates of excessive use among adults remain high. Excessive alcohol consumption is an established risk factor for atrial fibrillation (AF), but what are the effects of moderate and mild consumption on AF? In a new study published in HeartRhythm, the official journal of the Heart Rhythm Society and the Cardiac Electrophysiology Society, Australian researchers showed that regular moderate alcohol consumption (an average of 14 glasses per week) results in more electrical evidence of scarring and impairments in electrical signaling compared with non-drinkers and light drinkers. Alcohol consumption is therefore an important modifiable risk factor for AF.

AF is an abnormal heart rhythm characterized by rapid and irregular beating of the atria (the two upper chambers of the heart). Observational studies suggest that even moderate regular alcohol consumption may increase the risk of AF. A meta-analysis of seven studies involving nearly 860,000 patients and approximately 12,500 individuals with AF demonstrated an eight percent increase in incident AF for each additional daily standard drink. Despite the association between regular alcohol intake and AF, however, detailed human electrophysiological studies describing the nature of alcohol-related atrial remodeling have been lacking.

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of different degrees of alcohol consumption on atrial remodeling using high-density electroanatomic mapping. In this multi-center cross-sectional study in Australia, investigators performed detailed invasive testing on the atria of 75 patients with AF, 25 in each of three categories: lifelong non-drinkers, mild drinkers, and moderate drinkers. Patients self-reported their average alcohol consumption in standard drinks per week (one standard glass is around 12 grams of alcohol) over the preceding 12 months. Patients consuming two to seven drinks per week were considered mild drinkers, while those consuming eight to 21 drinks per week (average 14 drinks per week) were defined as moderate drinkers.

The investigators found that individuals who consumed moderate amounts of alcohol (average 14 drinks per week) had more electrical evidence of scarring and impairments in electrical signaling than non-drinkers and light drinkers.

"This study underscores the importance of excessive alcohol consumption as an important risk factor in AF," said lead investigator Professor Peter Kistler, MBBS, PhD, FHRS, from the Heart Centre, Alfred Hospital, Melbourne, Australia. "Regular moderate alcohol consumption, but not mild consumption, is an important modifiable risk factor for AF associated with lower atrial voltage and conduction slowing. These electrical and structural changes may explain the propensity to AF in regular drinkers. It is an important reminder for clinicians who are caring for patients with AF to ask about alcohol consumption and provide appropriate counselling in those who over-indulge."

A review of published studies indicates that use of benzodiazepines and benzodiazepine related drugs (BZRDs), which are prescribed to treat various psychiatric diseases, may increase the risk of pneumonia.

The International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry analysis included 12 reports related to 10 studies involving more than 120,000 pneumonia cases. After pooling the estimates, the odds for developing pneumonia were 1.25-fold higher in BZRD users compared with individuals who had not taken BZRDs.

There was an increased risk of pneumonia among current and recent users, but not past users.

Women who use certain types of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) are at a higher risk of developing potentially life-threatening blood clots, new research has confirmed.

The study, undertaken by researchers at The University of Nottingham and published in the BMJ, found that the risk of developing blood clots was only increased for women using HRT in tablet form and was slightly higher for higher dosages.

The experts hope the results will help to provide clearer, detailed information for patients and doctors about the relative risks of blood clots for all HRT treatments and enable them to make good treatment choices.

Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is used to relieve symptoms such as hot flushes and night sweats and reduce the risk of certain health conditions in women going through the menopause.

There are a range of different HRT treatments available, depending on the symptoms experienced. Some women require a drug based only on the oestrogen hormone, while others may need a combination of oestrogen and another hormone, progesterone. HRT can also be taken in different forms - by tablets, patches, gels or creams.

Although all treatments are effective in managing menopausal symptoms, an increased risk of venous thromboembolism (blood clots) is a rare, but serious, known side effect. A recently issued guideline from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) stressed that research results from studies trying to estimate the risk of developing blood clots as a result of HRT are still not clear, and that findings to date were not a reliable basis for decision-making by doctors or patients.

The Nottingham study aimed to provide clarity on the subject by identifying and comparing venous thromboembolism risks for all forms of HRT treatment used in the UK.

The study used data from the two largest UK primary care databases (QResearch and CPRD), which contain patient records from more than 2,000 English GP practices and associated hospital records over an 18-year period (1998-2017) to investigate real-life use and risks of blood clots for all types of HRT treatments.

The researchers compared the treatment prescription records of all women who developed blood clots with those for a group of women who did not. To ensure that the results properly reflected the effects of the different therapies, the study took into account other relevant health conditions and patient characteristics, which might have affected the risk of developing blood clots.

It found that women taking HRT tablets were up to two times more likely to be at risk/had a 70 per cent risk compared to other forms of HRT.

For tablet treatments, the risk was found to differ for two types of oestrogens. Both for single and combined hormone treatments, the risk of blood clots was 15 per cent higher for the treatments containing oestrogen manufactured from horse urine than for the synthetic oestradiol.

However, women who were using HRT in patch, gel or cream form were not found to be at risk, even at higher doses.

The results of the study could also be helpful to agencies such as NICE in the development of new best-practice guidelines.

Dr Yana Vinogradova, of the University's School of Medicine, undertook the research. The team also included Professors Julia Hippisley-Cox and Carol Coupland. Dr Vinogradova says: "Our study has shown that, for oral treatments, different tablets are associated with different risks of developing blood clots, depending on the active components. It has also confirmed that risks of thrombosis for patients using HRT treatments other than tablets (patches or gels) is very low. This lower risk has been known for more than ten years and - although patches or gels may not be acceptable in some circumstances - it was surprising to find that only 20 per cent of HRT prescriptions to date have been for non-oral treatments. Our findings are particularly important information for women, who require HRT treatment and are already at increased risk of developing blood clots."

MINNEAPOLIS - Carrying extra body fat, especially around the middle, may be linked to brain shrinkage, according to a study published in the January 9, 2019, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. For the study, researchers determined obesity by measuring body mass index (BMI) and waist-to-hip ratio in study participants and found those with higher ratios of both measures had the lowest brain volume.

BMI is a weight-to-height ratio. It is determined by dividing a person's weight by the square of their height. People with a BMI above 30.0 are considered obese. Waist-to-hip ratio is determined by dividing waist circumference by hip circumference. People with bigger bellies compared to their hips have higher ratios. Men above 0.90 and women above 0.85 are considered to be centrally obese.

"Existing research has linked brain shrinkage to memory decline and a higher risk of dementia, but research on whether extra body fat is protective or detrimental to brain size has been inconclusive," said study author Mark Hamer, PhD, of Loughborough University in Leicestershire, England. "Our research looked at a large group of people and found obesity, specifically around the middle, may be linked with brain shrinkage."

The study looked at 9,652 people with an average age of 55. Of that group, 19 percent were determined to be obese. Researchers measured BMI, waist-to-hip ratio and overall body fat and surveyed participants about their health. Researchers then used magnetic resonance imaging to determine brain volumes for white and gray brain matter and volumes in the various regions of the brain.

Gray matter contains most of the brain's nerve cells and includes brain regions involved in self-control, muscle control and sensory perception. White matter contains nerve fiber bundles that connect various regions of the brain.

After adjusting for other factors that may affect brain volume, such as age, physical activity, smoking and high blood pressure, researchers found that while a high BMI alone was linked to slightly lower brain volumes, those with high BMI and waist-to-hip ratios had lower gray matter brain volumes than participants who did not have a high waist-to-hip ratio. Specifically, researchers found that 1,291 people who had a high BMI and a high waist-to-hip ratio had the lowest average gray matter brain volume of 786 cubic centimeters, compared to 3,025 people of healthy weight who had an average gray matter brain volume of 798 cubic centimeters and 514 people with a high BMI but without high waist-to-hip ratio who had an average gray matter brain volume of 793 cubic centimeters. They found no significant differences in white matter brain volume.

"While our study found obesity, especially around the middle, was associated with lower gray matter brain volumes, it's unclear if abnormalities in brain structure lead to obesity or if obesity leads to these changes in the brain," said Hamer. "We also found links between obesity and shrinkage in specific regions of the brain. This will need further research but it may be possible that someday regularly measuring BMI and waist-to-hip ratio may help determine brain health."

A limitation of the study was that only 5 percent of those invited to participate in the study took part, and those who participated tended to be healthier than those who did not, so the results may not reflect the population as a whole.

A study published in the British Journal of Dermatology indicates that an investigational nonsteroidal topical cream (PAC-14028) may be effective for treating atopic dermatitis, one of the most common inflammatory skin diseases.

The trial involved a cream that blocks the transient receptor potential vanilloid subfamily, member 1, an ion channel involved in the perception of pain. This channel also contributes to inflammation and itchy skin in patients with atopic dermatitis.

In the 8-week, randomized, double-blind, multicentre, study that enrolled 194 adults with mild to moderate atopic dermatitis, the cream improved clinical symptoms and signs with a favourable safety profile.

According to the authors, a phase III clinical trial is underway to test if the topical medicine is safe and effective in teens and adults.

In a representative sample of the German population, older age, obesity, and depressive disorder were associated with experiencing chronic hip pain.

In the Musculoskeletal Care study of 2,515 adults, 4.9 percent reported chronic hip pain and an additional 1.5 percent reported chronic hip pain that was disabling. Hip pain affected 1-5 sites in 47 percent, and was widespread (6-19 sites) in 50 percent.

Obesity and increased values on a depression scale were associated with a 2.55-times and 8.53-times higher likelihood of chronic hip pain, respectively, compared with individuals without pain. Increased values on the depression scale also increased the likelihood of experiencing disabling chronic hip pain.

CLEVELAND, Ohio (January 9, 2019)--Few studies have been as responsible for changing the course of treatment of menopause symptoms to the extent that the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) did. The number of women taking hormones dramatically dropped as a result of the study, leaving many women to needlessly abandon a treatment that offered symptomatic relief. That's according to a new study published online in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS).

In the aftermath of the 2002 WHI announcement that estrogen-progestin therapy was being halted prematurely because of safety concerns, the prevalence of prescription hormone therapy (HT) declined immediately and still today is lower than pre-WHI levels. According to a new study that analyzed more than 17 years of data from the 3,018 participants in the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN), HT initiation dropped from 8.6% pre-WHI to 2.8% post-WHI. Similarly, the corresponding decrease in HT continuation was 84.0% to 62.0%.

Such decreases occurred across a wide range of participant subgroups, including younger women and those with more vasomotor symptoms (VMS) for whom HT provided the greatest relief with the least amount of risk. Hormone therapy use recommendations have been modified since 2002 as a result of greater education and the realization that some of the WHI results were misinterpreted as applying to all women. Today's guidelines allow for greater flexibility to reinforce the benefits of individualized treatment based on the age of the woman and the number of years since menopause.

Although this new study is not the first to document the decline in HT use as a result of the initial WHI findings, it differs by distinguishing between the declines in initiation versus continuation. It also is one of the only known studies to document reasons for discontinuation, concluding that many symptomatic women forego HT because of concerns about study findings that are not truly applicable to them. This specific group includes women aged in their 50s when VMS symptoms, such as hot flashes, are most prevalent, but the risks of HT are lower.

Study results appear in the article "Menopausal hormone therapy trends before versus after 2002: impact of the Women's Health Initiative Study Results."

"Further analysis of the WHI has shown hormone therapy to be safe and effective for menopausal women who have bothersome hot flashes, night sweats, or sleep disruption if they start hormone therapy while aged younger than 60 or within 10 years of menopause," says Dr. JoAnn Pinkerton, NAMS executive director. "Unfortunately, fear continues to keep symptomatic women from being offered, or using, hormone therapy."

An investigation published by The BMJ today reveals how Coca-Cola has shaped obesity science and public health policy in China towards its own interests.

Susan Greenhalgh, John King and Wilma Cannon Fairbank Research Professor of Chinese Society at Harvard University, uncovers how, through a complex web of institutional, financial, and personal links, Coke has been able to influence China's health policies.

Though the effect on official obesity policy cannot be precisely measured, she shows how China's policies align well with Coke's position of emphasising physical fitness over dietary restrictions.

As such, she argues that the company "has cleverly manoeuvered itself into a position of behind-the-scenes power that ensures that government policy to fight the growing obesity epidemic does not undermine its interests."

In 2011, 42.3% of Chinese adults were overweight or obese, up from 20.5% in 1991.

And with China now Coke's third largest market by volume, she warns that "the size and consequences of the Chinese obesity epidemic are likely to continue to worsen."

In 2013, Greenhalgh conducted dozens of interviews with Beijing based obesity researchers to try to understand the rapidly growing Chinese obesity epidemic.

The project led her to the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI), set up by a Coke executive 40 years ago in the US, and whose Chinese branch (ILSI-China) is housed within the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a unit of the government health ministry.

Critics call ILSI a front for the food industry, but ILSI-China is widely seen as a bridge builder between government, academia, and industry, providing the latest scientific information for policy decisions on nutrition, food safety, and chronic disease prevention and control. It is funded by several dozen companies, including Coke, Nestle, McDonalds and PepsiCo.

Through her work, Greenhalgh discovered how between 1999 and 2015 ILSI-China's obesity activities shifted from a focus on nutrition to physical activity, in line with Coke's position that an active lifestyle was key to tackling obesity.

For instance, hard hitting dietary policies recommended by the World Health Organization - taxing sugary drinks and restricting food advertising to children - were missing, and national plans and targets emphasised physical fitness over dietary restrictions, in line with Coke's "energy balance" perspective.

What's more, obesity meetings sponsored or co-sponsored by ILSI-China were packed with presentations by experts with financial ties to Coke or ILSI with a focus on the science of physical activity rather than nutrition.

"In putting its massive resources behind only one side of the science, and with no other parties sufficiently resourced to champion more balanced solutions that included regulation of the food industry, the company made China safe for Coke," argues Greenhalgh.

After a series of critical investigative reports by the New York Times in 2015, Coke pulled back on its aggressive promotion of the science of physical activity. But its influence continues to be felt in China since the ILSI structure remains in place and the activity programmes it supported are now well established.

Global nutrition expert Barry Popkin, who has worked in China for decades, believes ILSI's influence in promoting the physical activity agenda "was extremely detrimental and put China decades behind in efforts to create a healthier diet for its citizens."

But many Chinese scholars welcomed industry's involvement in public health, and only a tiny handful of those interviewed by Greenhalgh decried industry's influence.

Coca-Cola, ILSI-China, and the Chinese health ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

Unlike the US and Europe, which have well established institutions of investigative journalism and civil society, China has no watchdogs, explains Greenhalgh. The press is not free to complain and China's non-governmental organisations are preoccupied with more urgent matters. China's scientists can hardly bite the hand that feeds them, she adds.

Since 2016, the state has finally begun to seriously tackle chronic disease, "but its approach emphasises education and market development, not industry regulation," she writes. "With no one to complain about - or even see - this corporate biasing of science and policy, the size and consequences of the Chinese obesity epidemic are likely to continue to worsen," she concludes.

We now know that corporations make extensive use of third parties such as ILSI to shape thinking about what are appropriate responses to the health consequences of their products, write Professor Martin McKee at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and colleagues, in a linked editorial.

There are, however, signs that attitudes are changing, they say, pointing to examples of organisations withdrawing from industry funded projects. Yet, as the recent decision by Public Health England to partner with the alcohol industry funded charity Drinkaware shows, "this message has not got through to everyone," they conclude.

A complex network of research funding, institutional ties and personal influence has allowed the Coca-Cola Company, through its connections with a nonprofit group, to exert substantial influence over obesity science and policy solutions in China, and as a result government policy aligns with the company's corporate interests, a Harvard study has found.

The study, conducted by Susan Greenhalgh, the John King and Wilma Cannon Fairbank Research Professor of Chinese Society, is the first of its kind to demonstrate not only efforts by the food industry to influence public policy, but their impact as well. The study is described in two January 9 articles published in The BMJ and the Journal of Public Health Policy.

"There have been decades of work on how big pharma and big tobacco have tried to influence science and dictate policy, but the research on big food and big soda is just now emerging," Greenhalgh said. "I don't know of any other work that has documented this type of impact, especially on the policy of an entire nation.

"When I reviewed China's policies, I could see them using the very same language Coke did," she continued. "For example, they talk about energy balance and making physical activity part of medical treatment or balancing eating and moving...their policy aligns very well with Coke's interests, and it's out of alignment with some of the policies advocated by the World Health Organization."

At the heart of efforts to steer Chinese policy, Greenhalgh said, is a US-based, industry-funded nonprofit known as the International Life Sciences Institute, or ILSI. Founded by then-Coca-Cola Vice President Alex Malaspina in 1978, ILSI now boasts 17 branches worldwide, including one in China, where the organization's roots run particularly deep.

Though ILSI's Chinese branch - officially known as ILSI-Focal Point in China - wasn't established until 1993, Greenhalgh said, its founder Chen Chunming had been connected to the US organization as far back as 1978, when Malaspina visited the newly-reopened nation in search of local partners.

A nutritionist who founded and was the first president of the agency that eventually became the China CDC, Chen maintained deep ties to China's public health sector, including the Ministry of Health, even after establishing ILSI-China, Greenhalgh said, which allowed her work behind the scenes to exert significant policy influence.

In an effort to understand how that influence may have shifted public policy in China, Greenhalgh turned to an archive of ILSI-China newsletters from 1999 to 2015, which detailed nearly all of the organization's scientific and public-policy activities, ranging from research funding to organizing conferences to drafting public policy.

The earliest stages of that work, Greenhalgh's research shows, began in 1999, when ILSI-Global asked its branches to put obesity on their agendas.

From 1999 to 2003, Greenhalgh found, about half of ILSI-China's work dealt with measurement issues - the organization createda series of China-specific BMI thresholds - and advanced at least some prevention efforts aimed at nutrition, but none centered on physical activity.

By 2004, however, that began to change.

It was then, Greenhalgh said, that Coke began to position itself as an advocate of "healthy active lifestyles," and to promote the message that all food and drinks could be part of a healthy diet - to avoid obesity, the argument went, physical activity was key.

The change was almost immediately reflected in ILSI-China's activities, Greenhalgh found. Between 2004 and 2009, a third of ILSI-China sponsored or co-sponsored obesity activities focused on physical activity. Between 2010 and 2015, the proportion nearly doubled while obesity activities focused on nutrition sank to just one in five.

And though the organization hosted a number of conferences dedicated to obesity research, details in the newsletters show that most meetings were packed with experts who had ties to ILSI or industry, Greenhalgh said. In a number of cases, agenda space was even set aside for industry presentations.

That same shift, Greenhalgh said, was reflected in the news stories that appeared in ILSI newsletters - before 2003, the group published no stories suggesting activity could combat obesity. From 2010 through 2015, though, 60 percent of articles backed the idea, and fewer than one quarter focused on diet.

After a series of critical investigative reports by the New York Times in 2015, Coke pulled back on its aggressive promotion of the science of physical activity. But its influence continues to be felt in China since the ILSI structure remains in place and the activity programs it supported are now well established.

And though many scientists might see her results as clear evidence of industry bias, in extended interviews with more than two dozen obesity and public health experts Greenhalgh found most Chinese scientists shrugged off those concerns.

"The vast majority said there was no conflict of interest," she said. "There were a tiny handful who believed that whenever corporations are funding science it will inevitably be biased, but they were very much in the minority, and most asked me not to use their names because they were afraid of possible consequences...because the political culture in China is very business-friendly and pro-West."

"Western science and especially American science is considered to be the best in the world, and what happens is these companies present themselves as scientifically and technically advanced and generous because of their social responsibility programs," she added. "So the feeling is what's not to love about Coca-Cola?"

Ultimately, Greenhalgh said, one of the reasons ILSI - and by extension Coke - was able to so effectively re-direct Chinese policy on obesity was because they were the only ones conducting the research.

"Basically the story is that the government didn't care about chronic diseases...but ILSI cared because these companies were pushing the agenda," she said. ""The fact is that ILSI-China was the only entity that had any money and interest in (obesity,) and they had it because of corporate funding, because Coke wanted to get its solution onto the public health agenda at the earlies possible moment and influence the global discourse on obesity."

That physical activity solution, Greenhalgh said, runs counter to much of the current research thinking? on combatting obesity.

"In the past, there were a handful of scholars who felt that...the obesity epidemic was actually an epidemic of inactivity," she said. "But today there are very few people in the field of chronic disease who believe that, and increasingly people are recognizing that while you have to stay active, when it comes to reducing obesity, diet is more important."

Going forward, Greenhalgh said she hopes to examine the impact of ILSI globally and is working on a book that would explore the organization's work in China in greater detail.

"It was only because of my background in science and technology studies, which encourages me to look deep down into how science is done and take it apart, that I was able to find this," Greenhalgh said. "I was shocked when I discovered this. I had no idea."

"When you read the literature, there's not much about how Coke is influencing obesity science and policy in the US, but the literature that does exist shows Coke's efforts," she continued. "This shows their impact, so I was just stunned."

Having two or more non-communicable diseases (multimorbidity) costs the country more than the sum of those individual diseases would cost, according to a new study published this week in PLOS Medicine by Tony Blakely from the University of Otago, New Zealand, and colleagues.

Few studies have estimated disease-specific health system expenditure for many diseases simultaneously. In the new work, the researchers used nationally linked health data for all New Zealanders, including hospitalization, outpatient, pharmaceutical, laboratory and primary care from July 1, 2007 through June 30, 2014. These data include 18.9 million person-years and $26.4 billion US in spending. The team calculated annual health expenditure per person and analyzed the association of this spending to whether a person had any of six non-communicable disease classes--cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, musculoskeletal, neurological, and lung/liver/kidney (LLK) diseases--or a combination of any of those diseases.

59% of publically-funded health expenditures in New Zealand were attributable to non-communicable diseases. Nearly a quarter (23.8%) of this spending was attributable to the costs of having two or more diseases above and beyond what the diseases cost separately. Of the remaining spending, heart disease and stroke accounted for 18.7%, followed by musculoskeletal (16.2%), neurological (14.4%), cancer (14.1%), LLK disease (7.4%) and diabetes (5.5%). Expenditure was generally the highest in the year of diagnosis and the year of death.

"There is a surprising lack of disease-attributed costing studies involving multiple diseases at once," the authors say. "Governments and health systems managers and funders can improve planning and prioritisation knowing where the money goes."

AUGUSTA, Ga. (Jan. 8, 2019) - There's more evidence that a high-fat diet is bad for both younger males and females, but exactly how it's harmful may differ between the sexes, scientists report.

While they hypothesized that high-fat fare would be harder on males, they found that in just four weeks both young male and female rats experienced comparable increases in blood pressure.

"You have a lot of people consuming high-fat diets and we don't know enough about what effect it's having on females," says Dr. Jennifer C. Sullivan, pharmacologist and physiologist in the Department of Physiology at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.

The study, published in the American Journal of Physiology, Heart and Circulatory Physiology, looked simultaneously at young males and female Dahl salt-sensitive rats, bred to become hypertensive in response to a high-salt diet. More recently, male Dahl rats have been shown to also have significant blood pressure response to a high-fat diet.

"Since women are more likely to be obese than men and the association between increases in body weight and blood pressure is stronger in women, we wanted to see if the same response occurs in the female as well," says Sullivan, the study's corresponding author.

They found the usual cardiovascular protection afforded to younger females appeared lost in the face of high fat consumption. While the young male rats, like male humans, started out with higher blood pressure than their female counterparts, both sexes rapidly experienced a comparable degree of blood pressure increase.

"You put them on high salt, and the males have a bigger increase in pressure; you put them on fat, and males and females have the same increase in pressure," Sullivan says.

In both sexes, the high-fat diet also increased inflammation-promoting T cells and decreased the number of inflammation-dampening regulatory T cells, or Tregs, in the aorta, the biggest blood vessel in the body which they studied as an example of what was happening inside blood vessels.

But that's where some sex differences surfaced. Females normally have a higher percentage of Tregs, which help them decrease blood pressure, and while both males and females experienced the decrease, the females maintained that higher percentage regardless of what they consumed. Other studies have shown that in response to things that could increase blood pressure, like high-salt or high-fat intake, females actually increase the percentage of Tregs and maintain a good pressure.

In the kidneys, which play a major role in regulating blood pressure, they again found increases in inflammation-promoting T cells in both sexes but a greater increase in males.

Sullivan reiterates that the changes - in males and females alike - were independent of a significant weight gain and occurred in just four weeks.

"To me it really highlights the importance of understanding what you are eating," says Sullivan. "I think we may be underestimating how bad a consistently high-fat diet is for us."

On the high-fat diet both sexes actually ate less, which meant their caloric intake did not really increase, but the females ate more of the high-fat fare. Still, males started out weighing more and continued to weigh more throughout the four weeks, although weight increases compared to rats on a normal diet were minimal.

The high-fat diet actually decreased blood levels of triglycerides, a type of fat considered a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, in the males but increased it in females. Cholesterol and blood glucose levels were not really affected in either sex.

Sullivan and her team are now directly addressing the hypothesis that T cells contribute to blood pressure increases on a high-fat diet, and whether that diet is directly driving an immune response that drives the blood pressure. She suspects it's the changes to fat cells driving it rather than a direct interaction between high-fat food and the immune response.

About 1 in 3 adults in the United States is hypertensive, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and about two-thirds of cases are associated with excessive weight gain.

The prevalence of metabolic syndrome - a cluster of cardiovascular risks that include higher blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol levels and more fat particularly around the waist - is higher in females than males, 34.4 percent compared with 29 percent, respectively, according to the American Heart Association and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Obesity rates are approaching 40 percent in adults and 20 percent in children, with female and minority populations more likely to be obese than male and white counterparts, the organizations report.

New research shows for the first time that adults with autism can recognise complex emotions such as regret and relief in others as easily as those without the condition.

Psychologists at the University of Kent used eye-tracking technology to monitor participants as they read stories in which a character made a decision then experienced a positive or negative outcome.

The lead author Professor Heather Ferguson, from the University's School of Psychology, explained that the study highlights a previously overlooked strength in adults with ASD.

The researchers found that adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were quickly able to think about how things might have turned out differently (either better or worse than reality), then judge whether the story character would feel regret or relief (known as counterfactual emotions).

The adults with ASD were found to be just as good at recognising regret emotions in the character as adults without the condition, and even better at computing relief.

The eye-tracking method provided sensitive information on when readers had inferred the appropriate counterfactual emotion for the character. Appropriate emotions resulted in shorter reading times.

Professor Ferguson said: 'Our study is unusual in using state-of-the-art eye-tracking methods to test how people understand emotions in real time. We have shown that, contrary to previous research that has highlighted the difficulties adults with autism experience with empathy and perspective-taking, people with autism possess previously overlooked strengths in processing emotions.'

Researchers at the University of Birmingham have found two biomarkers that could be used to identify a heart condition known as atrial fibrillation in patients who have three 'clinical risks'.

Atrial fibrillation is the most common heart rhythm disturbance, affecting around 1.6 million people in the UK. Those with atrial fibrillation may be aware of noticeable heart palpitations, when their heart feels like it is pounding, fluttering or beating irregularly. Sometimes atrial fibrillation does not cause any symptoms and a person who has it is completely unaware that their heart rate is irregular.

Now scientists have identified patients are more at risk of atrial fibrillation if they have three 'clinical risks' - they are older aged, male and have a high Body Mass Index. These patients, say the scientists, could be screened for atrial fibrillation by testing their blood to see if they have elevated levels of two biomarkers - a hormone secreted by the heart called brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) and a protein responsible for phosphate regulation called fibroblast growth factor-23 (FGF-23).

The research was carried out by scientists from the Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and the Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences at the University of Birmingham's College of Medical and Dental Sciences and is published today (Jan 7th) in European Heart Journal.

First author Dr Winnie Chua said: "People with atrial fibrillation are much more likely to develop blood clots and suffer from strokes. To avoid strokes it is important for them to take anticoagulant drugs to prevent blood clotting. However, atrial fibrillation is often only diagnosed after a patient has suffered a stroke.

"Therefore it is important that patients at risk are screened so that they can begin taking anticoagulants to prevent potentially life-threatening complications."

Joint First author Yanish Purmah added: "An electrocardiogram (ECG), a test which measures the electrical activity of your heart to show whether or not it is working normally, is usually used to screen patients for atrial fibrillation.

"ECG screening is resource-intensive and burdensome for patients therefore it is important that the right patients are selected for this type of screening

"The biomarkers we have identified have the potential to be used in a blood test in community settings such as in GP practices to simplify patient selection for ECG screening."

Until now, most studies identifying biomarkers in patients with atrial fibrillation have been hypothesis-driven and involved the analysis of a single or small selection of blood biomarkers. In this study, the scientists analysed 40 common cardiovascular biomarkers in a cohort of 638 hospital patients who were recruited between September 2014 and August 2016.

To obtain the results, the scientists combined traditional statistical analysis with completely new and innovative machine learning techniques.

Senior author Dr Larissa Fabritz said: "The research outcomes were surprising. While BNP is already a known and widely used in clinical practice biomarker, the results around the effectiveness of the FGF-23 biomarker was an unexpected and new finding. FGF-23 is only currently used in a research based environment, but we have shown how its use could be invaluable in a clinical setting."

Corresponding author Professor Paulus Kirchhof, Director of the University of Birmingham's Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences, said: "We hope that, as the result of our findings, more people with what can often be a silent disease are diagnosed so that any complications can be prevented."

Funded by the University of Birmingham, the research was supported by CATCH ME, an EU-funded consortium led by the University of Birmingham, the British Heart Foundation and Leducq Foundation. The research was carried out in collaboration with Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, the European Society of Cardiology, The German Atrial Fibrillation NETwork (AFNET), and Health Data Research UK.

Professor Metin Avkiran, Associate Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation (BHF), added: "Atrial fibrillation increases the risk of stroke, a serious condition that causes over 36,000 deaths in the UK each year, but is often detected too late. This research has used sophisticated statistical and machine learning methods to analyse patient data and provides encouraging evidence that a combination of easy-to-measure indices may be used to predict atrial fibrillation.

"The study may pave the way towards better detection of people with AF and their targeted treatment with blood-thinning medicines for the prevention of stroke and its devastating consequences."

The research, which began in 2013, is ongoing and next steps will involve follow-up appraisals of the patients recruited to the study in order to further improve the prevention and treatment of atrial fibrillation.

In the current issue of Family Medicine and Community Health (Volume 6, Number 4, 2018; DOI: https://doi.org/10.15212/FMCH.2017.0122, Smitha Malenahalli Chandrashekarappa, Narayana Murthy Mysuru Ramakrishnaiah, Renuka Manjunath of the Department of Community Medicine, JSS Medical College, Mysore, Karnataka, India consider socio-demographic variables that might be contributing to malnutrition in the age group between 16-19 years (late adolescence). Many countries, including India, have introduced nutritional programs for the improvement of nutrition in adolescents. Such studies help to evaluate the progress made by such programs, and also by identifying the factors contributing towards malnutrition, would help the planning and implementation of better programs towards specific target groups. Since adolescents form the future of any country, focusing on adolescent nutrition, which has major health implications in the life cycle of an individual, is the need of the hour, more so when it comes to developing countries.

January 4, 2018 - For surgeons getting ready to enter the operating room (OR), the chances of contamination may be lower if they put their gowns on by themselves - without the assistance of a surgical technician, according to an experimental study in the Journal of Orthopaedic Trauma. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

Contamination occurs in most two-person assisted gowning procedures, suggests the study by Kenton Panas, MD, and colleagues of The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City. The researchers write, "We suggest a single-person gowning step to help optimize sterile technique in the OR.".

Surgeons Ask, 'Are We Contaminated Before We Cut?'

The researchers designed an experiment to assess possible breaches of sterility during the gowning step before surgery. The study simulated a two-person gowning procedure in which a surgical technician unfolds the gown and holds it open for the surgeon to slide his/her arms through.

The potential for contamination was monitored by coating the surgical technician's gown with a special resin that glows under ultraviolet light. If any of the glowing resin was detected on the surgeon's gown after the procedure, it was considered a contamination event. Three orthopaedic surgeons and three experienced technicians performed a total of 27 gowning procedures.

The results showed evidence of cross-contamination in 67 percent of gowning procedures. All areas of contamination, as shown by glowing of the resin under ultraviolet light, were on the sleeves of the surgical gown.

The surgeons and technicians were selected based on variations in height: in both groups, one participant was tall, one medium height, and one short. The surgeon's height was a significant source of variation, with the tallest surgeon having the greatest amount of contamination of the gown of the sleeve.

The contamination rate was unaffected by technician's height, nor by the surgeon's experience. In fact, the least-experienced surgeon participating in the study had the lowest rate of gown contamination.

Following sterile technique is critical for everyone working in the OR. "Any breach of sterile technique can lead to contamination, which ultimately may lead to infection," the researchers write. This is especially important in orthopaedic surgery because of the frequent use of implantable materials. While several OR procedures have been studied to assess their impact on contamination rates, this is the first study to assess the process of putting on surgical gowns.

Cross-contamination of the surgeon's gown is a common occurrence during the standard two-person assisted gowning procedure, the new findings suggest. The risk of contamination appears greater when gowning taller surgeons - possibly because the longer sleeves are more likely to come into contact with the technician's gown.

While acknowledging their study's small size, Dr. Panas and coauthors write, "this study identifies a common and overlooked pattern of sterile field contamination." They suggest that a single-person gowning procedure - where the gown is handed to the surgeon, who then puts it on without assistance - can eliminate this source of contamination and help to optimize sterile technique in the OR.

"Postoperative infections can be life changing in the critically ill and can lead to permanent disability, loss of limb, or worse," Dr. Panas comments. "We hope our work gives surgeons of all specialties one more tool to accomplish our ultimate goal as healthcare providers, which is the optimization of patient care."