Key Protein May Link Obesity, Diabetes, Heart Woes

TUESDAY, Sept. 1 (HealthDay News) � Researchers say they know
why obesity leads to diabetes and cardiovascular disease, a finding that
may help experts target therapies to limit the health impact of being very
overweight.

A Japanese team discovered a protein that causes ongoing, low-grade
inflammation within fat tissues, which contributes to the health
consequences that come with obesity, said Yuichi Oike of Kumamoto
University in Japan.

The report appears in the Sept. 2 issue of Cell Metabolism.

The culprit Oike's team identifies is a fat-derived protein called
angiopoietin-like protein 2, or Angptl2. In mice, Angptl2 levels are
elevated in fat tissue. Those levels increase even more in the
oxygen-deprived conditions typically found within obese fat tissue.

Higher Angptl2 levels are also found in the blood of people with higher
body mass index and insulin levels.

Obese mice lacking Angptl2 show less inflammation in their fat tissue
and are less insulin resistant, the researchers report. Likewise,
otherwise healthy mice made to have higher than normal Angptl2 levels in
their fat tissue develop inflammation and insulin resistance.

Angptl2 starts an inflammatory cascade, causing blood vessels to
remodel and attracting immune cells called macrophages, they note.

The researchers concluded that Angptl2 is a new molecular target that
could be used to improve the diagnosis and treatment of obesity and
related metabolic diseases.

More information

Learn more about obesity from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention here.

Carrot-toting tourists making Arizona burros obese

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. - There is an epidemic in an old gold mining town in western Arizona: The wild burros that roam the town's single street are overweight, with rolls of fat on their necks and big, full bellies. But don't blame them. They'll eat anything.
It's the half million tourists who visit tiny Oatman each year. They're the ones who have been feeding these critters carrots, hay or anything else, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management says.
The agency, which manages the burros, has launched a campaign it hopes will eventually steer the burros back into the desert to forage for grass and shrubs � and get them back into shape.
"The town has really encouraged burros to be down there; it's part of the draw of Oatman," said Roger Oyler, the program lead for wild horses and burros at the BLM in Phoenix. "We want to try to work with them to have burros around town, but we don't want the people feeding them."
Oatman attracts tourists wanting to see the honeymoon spot of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard and ogle the wild burros. The town of about 120 also boasts staged shootouts, tour bus holdups and shotgun weddings in a throwback to the Wild West.
The dozen burros that roam the street lined with antique, craft and gift shops are descendants of domesticated donkeys that miners released when the federal government shut down the gold mines after World War II.
"If it weren't for the burros, the rest of us wouldn't be here," says Jerry Love, who has worn many hats at the local chamber of commerce.
The BLM acknowledges that its campaign to stop feeding the burros will be a hard sell but likens it to when Yellowstone National Park told visitors there to stop feeding the bears. "As the feed is diminished over time, I think they'll start wandering out and remember what's out there for dinner," Oyler said.
Oatman storekeepers have been asked to stop feeding the burros or providing the treats the animals are so accustomed to. The BLM also has drafted scripts for gunfighters and shop owners that tell tourists quite bluntly that the burros are fat and are being loved to death.
Some slogans that could end up on posters or signs around town include, "No Diet-Busting Cubes or Carrots � Please!" "Keep Oatman Burros Happy and Healthy � No Extra Food," and "Give Burros Care, not Carrots."
The BLM says the burros that don't come into town are a lot healthier and don't have behavioral problems or pain caused by their hooves growing to a thickness that makes it hard for them to walk. "It's a matter of educating the public, but it's not going to happen overnight," Love said. "We don't want to discourage people from coming here because they can't feed the burros."
Love believes that the burros will roam the town regardless of whether they are hand-fed by tourists, but he said he doubts that all tourists will heed the BLM's message.
"BLM is certainly not going to put a carrot cop up here to make sure that nobody feeds the burros," he said. "They don't have the funding nor the manpower."
Jolene Brown, who owns Amargosa Toads, understands the premise of not feeding the animals, but said to cut them off completely from food is wrong.
The animals have been demanding, lately, kicking in the door to her gift shop and chewing at the door panel and on books because they're not getting the food they're used to, she said.
"I'm sure they can learn to forage, but people come from the entire world to feed the burros," said Brown, who refers to herself as the burros' grandma. "I don't agree to feed wild animals at all, but if they have been fed their whole lives, how can you take that away?"
If the burros are unable to fend for themselves and become too skinny, Oyler said the BLM has the option of rounding them up and putting them up for adoption.

In serious debt? You're also more likely obese

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
People who are heavily in debt are more likely to be heavy themselves, too, according to new research from Germany.

"Overindebted" people - defined as those who would find it impossible to pay off debts in a reasonable time frame � were about twice as likely to be overweight as the general population. They were more than 2.5 times as likely to be obese, Eva Muenster of the University of Mainz and her colleagues found.

European countries, as well as the United States, have seen a sharp rise in the percentage of people who are overindebted, Muenster and her team say. Estimates are that 3 million households - 7.6 percent - of German households fit into the "over-indebted" criteria.

Socioeconomic status is clearly linked to health, the researchers add, but techniques now used to measure it don't take debt into account. To investigate how debt might affect health, they surveyed 949 people who were receiving counseling for debt and insolvency at centers in two German states, comparing them to 8,318 people who participated in a 2003 telephone health survey and were considered to represent a slice of the general population that was not indebted.

The indebted individuals were younger, less educated, and less wealthy, and were also more likely to be depressed, overweight, or obese, the researchers found. About 11 percent of the general population was obese, compared to 25 percent of the indebted group. The indebted individuals were also more likely to smoke every day.

After taking these factors into account, Muenster and her colleagues found that being overindebted was associated with a 1.97-fold greater likelihood of being overweight, and a 2.56-fold greater risk of obesity.

Psychological factors could contribute to the greater risk of being overweight or obese among indebted people, Muenster and her team note, who may eat to cope with stress and depression. Healthy foods may be less affordable for them, the researchers add, while "energy-dense food such as sweets or fatty snacks are often less expensive compared to food with lower energy density such as fruit or vegetables."

The findings don't rule out the possibility that overweight or obese people are more likely to get into debt because they have a tougher time finding a job or make less money than slimmer people, the researchers note.

Muenster and her colleagues conclude by calling for investigators looking at socioeconomic status and health to include indebtedness in their analyses, along with standard measures like income and education.

SOURCE: BMC Public Health, online August 7, 2009.

New fat-fighting drug has anti-diabetes action too

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
Researchers searching for a cure for obesity said on Thursday they have developed a drug that not only makes mice lose weight, but reverses diabetes and lowers their cholesterol, too.

The drug, which they have dubbed fatostatin, stops the body from making fat, instead releasing the energy from food. They hope it may lead to a pill that would fight obesity, diabetes and cholesterol, all at once.

Writing in the journal Chemistry and Biology, Salih Wakil of Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, Motonari Uesugi of Kyoto University in Japan and colleagues said the drug interferes with a suite of genes turned on by overeating.

"Here, we are tackling the basics," Wakil said in a telephone interview. "I think that is what excited us."

Scientists are painfully aware that drugs that can make mice thin do nothing of the sort in humans. A hormone called leptin can make rats and mice drop weight almost miraculously but does little or nothing for an obese person, for instance.

But Wakil, whose team has patented the drug and is looking for a drug company to partner with, hopes this drug may be different. "I am very, very optimistic," he said.

Fatostatin is a small molecule, meaning it has the potential to be absorbed in pill form.

It works on so-called sterol regulatory element binding proteins or SREBPs, which are transcription factors that activate genes involved in making cholesterol and fatty acids.

"Fatostatin blocked increases in body weight, blood glucose, and hepatic (liver) fat accumulation in (genetically) obese mice, even under uncontrolled food intake," the researchers wrote.

Genetic tests showed the drug affected 63 different genes.

The idea of interfering with SREBP is not new. GlaxSmithKline has been working on a new-generation cholesterol drug that uses this pathway.

After four weeks, mice injected with fatostatin weighed 12 percent less and had 70 percent lower blood sugar levels, the researchers wrote.

Now they plan to test rats and rabbits, Wakil said.

The drug also had effects on prostate cancer cells they said � something that may help explain links between prostate cancer and obesity.

Obese People Have 'Severe Brain Degeneration'

A new study finds obese people have 8 percent less brain tissue than
normal-weight individuals. Their brains look 16 years older than the
brains of lean individuals, researchers said today.

Those classified as overweight have 4 percent less brain tissue and their brains appear to have aged prematurely by 8 years.

The results, based on brain scans of 94 people in their 70s, represent "severe brain degeneration," said Paul Thompson, senior author of the study and a UCLA professor of neurology.

"That's a big loss of tissue and it depletes your cognitive
reserves, putting you at much greater risk of Alzheimer's and other
diseases that attack the brain," said Thompson. "But you can greatly
reduce your risk for Alzheimer's, if you can eat healthily and keep
your weight under control."

The findings are detailed in the online edition of the journal Human Brain Mapping.

Obesity packs many negative health effects, including increased risk of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and some cancers. It's also been shown to reduce sexual activity.

More than 300 million worldwide are now classified as obese,
according to the World Health Organization. Another billion are
overweight. The main cause, experts say: bad diet, including an increased reliance on highly processed foods.

Obese people had lost brain tissue in the frontal and temporal
lobes, areas of the brain critical for planning and memory, and in the
anterior cingulate gyrus (attention and executive functions),
hippocampus (long-term memory) and basal ganglia (movement), the
researchers said in a statement today. Overweight people showed brain
loss in the basal ganglia, the corona radiata, white matter comprised
of axons, and the parietal lobe (sensory lobe).

"The brains of obese
people looked 16 years older than the brains of those who were lean,
and in overweight people looked 8 years older," Thompson said.

Obesity is measured by body mass index (BMI), defined as the weight
in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters. A BMI over
25 is defined as overweight, and a BMI of over 30 as obese.

The research was funded by the National Institute on Aging, National
Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, National Center for
Research Resources, and the American Heart Association.

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More Obesity News & Information

Original Story: Obese People Have 'Severe Brain Degeneration'
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Obesity Tied to Prostate Cancer Recurrence

FRIDAY, Aug. 21 (HealthDay News) � Obesity increases the risk of
prostate cancer recurrence in both black and white men, says a U.S. study
that challenges previous research suggesting obesity may be more
significant for black men.

"Not so. Obesity leads to worse cancer in both groups," study senior
author Dr. Stephen Freedland, an associate professor of urology and
pathology at the Duke University Medical Center Prostate Center, said in a
news release from the school.

Freedland and study author Dr. Jayakrishnan Jayachandran, a urology
oncology fellow, examined the medical records of 1,415 prostate cancer
patients who had undergone a radical prostatectomy. They found that race
had no influence on the relationship between obesity and the
aggressiveness of the cancer.

"We found that higher BMI [body-mass index] was associated with
significantly increased risk of cancer recurrence for both blacks and
whites," Jayachandran said in the news release.

The reason why obesity increases the risk of prostate cancer recurrence
isn't clear, but altered hormone levels might play a role.

"Obesity is associated with more estrogen and less testosterone, and it
may be that lower testosterone promotes more aggressive tumors as recent
studies have suggested," Jayachandran said.

Other obesity-related changes in the production of hormones, such as
insulin, insulin-like growth factor or leptin, may also be involved in the
development of more aggressive prostate cancer.

"This is something we simply do not understand, but we are actively
studying all of these factors," Jayachandran said.

The study appears in the current issue of Cancer.

More information

The American Cancer Society has more about prostate cancer.

Adult video gamers often overweight, depressed

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
Teens aren't the only ones glued to the video game console. According to a new survey, the average video gamer in the U.S. today is 35 years old � and not all that healthy physically or emotionally.

According to the survey released this week, the typical adult video game player is overweight, introverted and may be a little bit depressed.

The Internet-based survey involved adults aged 19 to 90 years old from the Seattle-Tacoma area, who were asked various questions about their health, as well as their media habits.

Of the 552 respondents (ages 19 to 90 years), 249 - a little more than 45 percent - identified themselves as video-game players � the majority of them men (56 percent).

In a report in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Dr. James B. Weaver III, of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, and colleagues say they found "measurable" associations between playing video games and health risks.

"As hypothesized," the researchers report, a higher body weight and a greater number of "poor mental health days" differentiated adult video gamers from non-gamers.

Men who said they played video games weighed more and used the Internet more than men who did not play video games, the survey showed.

Women who reported playing video games reported greater levels of depression and poorer overall health than non-gamers.

Adult video gamers also seemed less outgoing, or extroverted, and less social and assertive than non-gamers, consistent with prior research in adolescent video game enthusiasts that tied video game playing to sedentary habits, weight issues and mental health concerns.

Adult video gamers of both sexes relied more on the Internet for social support than non-gamers, which supports prior research suggesting that adult video game players may "sacrifice real-world social activities to play video games."

Weaver and colleagues suggest that video gaming for adults may be a form of "digital self-medication." Women, in particular, may immerse themselves in brain-engaging digital environments as a means of self-distraction; "in short, they literally 'take their minds off' their worries while playing a video game," the investigators note.

What drives men to the video game console is likely to be different.

In a commentary published with the survey results, Dr. Brian A. Primack of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine applauds Weaver and his team for "reminding us that video games are currently popular not only among young people but also among adults."

The greatest challenge, Primack contends, will be maintaining balance.

He asks: "How do we simultaneously help the public steer away from imitation playlike activities, harness the potentially positive aspects of video games and keep in perspective the overall place of video games in our society?"

Powerful gaming industry giants, warns Primack, "will successfully tout the potential health-related benefits of products they develop. But who will be left to remind us that � for children and adults alike � Hide-And-Seek and Freeze Tag are still probably what we need most?"

SOURCE: American Journal of Preventive Medicine, October 2009.