news 2012

Babies who are born small have a tendency to put on weight during childhood and adolescence if allowed free access to calories. However, a new animal model study at UCLA found when small babies were placed on a diet of moderately regulated calories during infancy, the propensity of becoming obese decreased.

Women who fall pregnant while dieting are more likely to have a child that could become obese or diabetic in later life, new research suggests. While the study was carried out in sheep, University of Manchester scientists suspect the findings may hold true for humans as well. The research, carried out with colleagues in New Zealand and Canada, may also have found a reason why human twins are more likely to develop type-2 diabetes in adulthood after the team studied twin lambs.

Researchers have developed a miniature on-chip gastrointestinal tract in order to observe the effects of various nutrients on health. The "NutriChip" project's in vitro tests have already begun, on dairy products. What happens in our bodies when we have eaten something? Are "healthy" food products actually good for us, once they have been digested and absorbed? Supported by Nano-Tera and Nestlé, the NutriChip project developed by Martin Gijs's team at the Laboratory of Microsystems at EPFL provides new insights to these questions.

Excavation of 19,000-year-old hunter-gatherer remains, including a vast camp site, is fuelling a reinterpretation of the greatest fundamental shift in human civilisation - the origins of agriculture.

Genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS), a powerful new technique developed at Cornell, is leveling the playing field in genomics research. Less than a year after publication, it is being applied to answer questions about diverse species, including hops, fox, turf grass, maize, cow, tomato and raspberry. The GBS protocol, published in May 2011 in the journal PLoS One, allows researchers to generate huge amounts of genetic information.

A study by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and The University of Minnesota indicates that a parent's weight change is a key contributor to the success of a child's weight loss in family-based treatment of childhood obesity. "We looked at things such as parenting skills and styles, or changing the home food environment, and how they impacted a child's weight," said Kerri N. Boutelle, PhD, associate professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at UC San Diego and Rady Children's Hospital-San Diego.

The wider the variety of foods served at a meal, the more a person will eat, new Cornell research shows. Conversely, having a "one-pot" dish, such as a soup, pasta, stew or stir-fry, will cut down on the amount of food and calories consumed. The study, which is the first to show these links, provides additional evidence in a growing body of research that indicates the environment plays a powerful role in determining how much we eat, the authors say.

PA 70/12 When new evidence published last year in the Journal of Physiology revealed the dramatic benefits of taking L-carnitine and carbohydrate in combination with exercise, researchers at The University of Nottingham did not stop there. They created a supplement for elite athletes, a nimble spin-out company to arrange manufacture and marketing, and began talking to UK Sport, the English Institute of Sport, and leading coaches and sports nutritionists to make it available to start contributing to athletes' training and performance.

Scientists find that micronutrients affect methylation, which has been associated with changes in the immune system.

Imperial College London Media Release Defects in a protein led by researchers at Imperial College London. The findings highlight a promising target for new drugs to treat obesity and metabolic disorders. The protein GPR120 is found on the surface of cells in the gut, liver and fat tissue and allows cells to detect and respond to unsaturated fatty acids from the diet, especially the omega-3 fatty acids which are believed to have a beneficial impact on health.

  Scientists at the University of Liverpool have found that women who own dogs are more physically active during pregnancy than those who don't. The study of more than 11,000 pregnant women, in partnership with Mars Petcare, showed that those who owned dogs were approximately 50% more likely to achieve the recommended 30 minutes of exercise a day through high levels of brisk walking than those without dogs.

A study of more than 11,000 pregnant women in Children of the 90s at the University of Bristol shows that those who owned dogs were approximately 50 per cent more likely than those who didn't to achieve the recommended 30 minutes of exercise a day through high levels of brisk walking. Scientists suggest that, as walking is a low-risk exercise, walking a dog could form part of a broader strategy to improve the health of pregnant women.

Researchers found that after one year, there was a 9 percent reduction in overweight and obese children in the parent-training intervention group, while a control group that did not receive the parent training had a 16 percent increase in overweight and obese children.

Scientists at King's College London and the National Diabetes Centre (Sri Lanka) have found evidence of a high number of risk factors for type 2 diabetes among the young urban population in Sri Lanka. The study is the first large-scale investigation into diabetes risk among children and young people in South Asia, and provides further evidence that the region is rapidly becoming a hotspot in the growing international diabetes epidemic.

A new study by psychologists at The University of Nottingham has shown that babies who are weaned using solid finger food are more likely to develop healthier food preferences and are less likely to become overweight as children than those who are spoon-fed pureed food. The research just published by BMJ Open set out to examine the impact of weaning style on food preferences and Body Mass Index in early childhood in a sample of 155 children.

Diabetes risk is increased in men and women who eat a diet that is high in processed meats, according to a study published online this week in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition . Processed meats include hot dogs, lunch meat, sausages and canned meats. The link to type 2 diabetes was even greater for those who regularly ate canned meat.

The more ongoing stress children are exposed to, the greater the odds they will become obese by adolescence, reports Cornell environmental psychologist Gary Evans in the journal Pediatrics (129:1). Nine-year-old children who were chronically exposed to such stressors as poverty, crowded housing and family turmoil gain more weight and were significantly heavier by age 13 than they would have been otherwise, the study found.

The death rate from heart attacks in England has halved in the last decade, according to Oxford University research. The study published in the British Medical Journal found that there were fewer heart attacks in the last decade - and fewer of these were fatal - compared with earlier years. 'These are big success stories for public health and for the NHS,' says Kate Smolina, first author on the study.

PA 22/12 Horse owners are most likely to use their vet to guide the choice of nutritional supplements they feed their animal, but also rely heavily on recommendations from other riders, a unique study has revealed. Early findings from the research, being led by the School of Veterinary Sciences at The University of Nottingham, also found that joint and mobility and behaviour problems topped the list of owners concerns when seeking supplements for their horse.

People who suffer from sleep disturbances are at major risk for obesity, diabetes, and coronary artery disease, according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. For the first time in such a large and diverse sample, analyzing the data of over 130,000 people, the new research also indicates that general sleep disturbance (difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, and/or sleeping too much) may play a role in the development of cardiovascular and metabolic disorders.