Excess Stomach Fat Can Elevate Heart Disease, Cancer Risk

Main Category: Obesity / Weight Loss / Fitness
Also Included In: Heart Disease;  Cancer / Oncology
Article Date: 12 Jul 2013 - 1:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Excess Stomach Fat Can Elevate Heart Disease, Cancer Risk

Individuals with excessive abdominal fat have a greater risk of heart disease and cancer than individuals with a similar body mass index (BMI) who carry their fat in other areas of the body, according to a study published online in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Death and disease risk associated with excess body weight can vary among individuals with similar BMI. Ectopic fat, or fat located where it is not supposed to be, in this case being visible in the abdominal area, could be the cause of this difference in risk. It's widely known that abdominal fat can be more dangerous than fat in other areas, but this study is the first to use CT scan to study specifically located fat depots for direct associations with disease risk.

"Given the worldwide obesity epidemic, identification of high-risk individuals is important, as it allows targeting of preventive and therapeutic measures," said Kathryn A. Britton, MD, MPH, lead author of the study and an instructor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

With this study, researchers sought to find a link between the location of body fat and specific risk factors for heart disease and cancer, which could explain why individuals with different body types and similar BMIs have varied obesity related health conditions.

Researchers assessed ectopic fat in the abdominal area, around the heart tissue and around the aortic artery of 3,086 participants from the Framingham Heart Study and followed the participants for heart disease and cancer for up to seven years. The average age of participants was 50 years and nearly half were women.

Each patient was assessed, using a CT scan to identify areas of fat accumulation. Over the follow-up period, patients were assessed for heart disease, cancer and death risk while adjusting for standard risk factors.

Overall, there were 90 cardiovascular events, 141 cancer cases and 71 deaths. Abdominal fat, which is typically an indicator of fat around internal organs, was associated with incident heart disease and cancer after adjusting for clinical risk factors and general obesity.

"Contrary to previously published studies comparing BMI and waist circumference, the presence of abdominal fat improved the ability to predict for cardiovascular disease, supporting the hypothesis that abdominal fat may partially underlie the association of body fat and heart disease and cancer," said Caroline S. Fox, MD, MPH, senior author on the study and a senior investigator at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Laboratory for Metabolic and Population Health in Framingham, Mass.

Note from the British Heart Foundation about these findings:

Maureen Talbot, Senior Cardiac Nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: "We already know that excess stomach fat increases your risk of developing heart disease but this research confirms there is a greater risk even if you have a normal BMI.

"The dangers of abdominal fat can't be ignored and nor can the importance of measuring waist circumference when it comes to assessing cardiovascular disease risk. You can help keep control of your weight by eating a healthy balanced diet and getting plenty of exercise."

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our obesity / weight loss / fitness section for the latest news on this subject.

This work was supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's Framingham Heart Study. Dr. Britton was supported by a NHLBI Research Career Development Award.

‘Body Fat Distribution, Incident Cardiovascular Disease, Cancer, and All-cause Mortality’, Kathryn A. Britton et al, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, July 2013.

American College of Cardiology

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Consumption Of Artificial Sweeteners Associated With Obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome, Cardiovascular Disease

Main Category: Obesity / Weight Loss / Fitness
Also Included In: Nutrition / Diet;  Diabetes
Article Date: 12 Jul 2013 - 1:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Consumption Of Artificial Sweeteners Associated With Obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome, Cardiovascular Disease

More and more Americans are consuming artificial sweeteners as an alternative to sugar, but whether this translates into better health has been heavily debated. An opinion article published by Cell Press in the journal Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism reviews surprising evidence on the negative impact of artificial sweeteners on health, raising red flags about all sweeteners - even those that don't have any calories.

"It is not uncommon for people to be given messages that artificially-sweetened products are healthy, will help them lose weight or will help prevent weight gain," says author Susan E. Swithers of Purdue University. "The data to support those claims are not very strong, and although it seems like common sense that diet sodas would not be as problematic as regular sodas, common sense is not always right."

Consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks has been linked to obesity, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndrome - a group of risk factors that raises the risk for heart disease and stroke. As a result, many Americans have turned to artificial sweeteners, which are hundreds of times sweeter than sugar but contain few, if any, calories. However, studies in humans have shown that consumption of artificially sweetened beverages is also associated with obesity, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndrome as well as cardiovascular disease. As few as one of these drinks per day is enough to significantly increase the risk for health problems.

Moreover, people who regularly consume artificial sweeteners show altered activation patterns in the brain's pleasure centers in response to sweet taste, suggesting that these products may not satisfy the desire for sweets. Similarly, studies in mice and rats have shown that consumption of noncaloric sweeteners dampens physiological responses to sweet taste, causing the animals to overindulge in calorie-rich, sweet-tasting food and pack on extra pounds.

Taken together, the findings suggest that artificial sweeteners increase the risk for health problems to an extent similar to that of sugar and may also exacerbate the negative effects of sugar. "These studies suggest that telling people to drink diet sodas could backfire as a public health message," Swithers says. "So the current public health message to limit the intake of sugars needs to be expanded to limit intake of all sweeteners, not just sugars."

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
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Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism, Swithers et al.: "Artificial sweeteners produce the counterintuitive effect of inducing metabolic derangements."

Cell Press

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posted by kathryn on 12 Jul 2013 at 3:45 pm

I have noticed that many people with weight problems are drinking the poison sweeteners along with massive portions of food.
In a healthy diet sugar is a natural option, it appears diabetes 2 has increased while using the sweeteners, perhaps being obese is not related diabetic problems as I note many slim people and anorexic people use sweeteners and some have diabetes!

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'Consumption Of Artificial Sweeteners Associated With Obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome, Cardiovascular Disease'

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Rates Of Decline In Aging And Alzheimer's Disease Higher For Women

Main Category: Alzheimer's / Dementia
Also Included In: Seniors / Aging;  Women's Health / Gynecology
Article Date: 12 Jul 2013 - 0:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Rates Of Decline In Aging And Alzheimer's Disease Higher For Women

The rates of regional brain loss and cognitive decline caused by aging and the early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD) are higher for women and for people with a key genetic risk factor for AD, say researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine in a study published online in the American Journal of Neuroradiology.

The linkage between APOE e4 - which codes for a protein involved in binding lipids or fats in the lymphatic and circulatory systems - was already documented as the strongest known genetic risk factor for sporadic AD, the most common form of the disease. But the connection between the sex of a person and AD has been less-well recognized, according to the UC San Diego scientists.

"APOE e4 has been known to lower the age of onset and increase the risk of getting the disease," said the study's first author Dominic Holland, PhD, a researcher in the Department of Neurosciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine. "Previously we showed that the lower the age, the higher the rates of decline in AD. So it was important to examine the differential effects of age and APOE e4 on rates of decline, and to do this across the diagnostic spectrum for multiple clinical measures and brain regions, which had not been done before."

The scientists evaluated 688 men and women over the age of 65 participating in the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, a longitudinal, multi-institution study to track the progression of AD and its effects upon the structures and functions of the brain. They found that women with mild cognitive impairment (a condition precursory to AD diagnosis) experienced higher rates of cognitive decline than men; and that all women, regardless of whether or not they showed signs of dementia, experienced greater regional brain loss over time than did men. The magnitude of the sex effect was as large as that of the APOE e4 allele.

"Assuming larger population-based samples reflect the higher rates of decline for women than men, the question becomes what is so different about women," said Holland. Hormonal differences or change seems an obvious place to start, but Holland said this is largely unknown territory - at least regarding AD.

"Another important finding of this study is that men and women did not differ in the level of biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease pathology," said co-author Linda McEvoy, PhD, an associate professor in the UCSD Department of Radiology. "This suggests that brain volume loss in women may also be caused by factors other than Alzheimer's disease, or that in women, these pathologies are more toxic. We clearly need more research on how an individual's sex affects AD pathogenesis."

Holland acknowledged that the paper likely raises more questions than it answers. "There are many factors that may affect the sex differences we observed, such as whether the women in this study may have had higher rates of diabetes or insulin resistance than the men. We also do not know how the use of hormone replacement therapy, reproductive history or years since menopause may have affected these differences. All these issues need to be examined. There is no prevailing theory."

But he said that just as APOE e4 status identifies individuals at greater risk of AD, the sex of a person might prove an important determinant in future treatment as well. Currently, there is no cure for AD or any existing therapies that slow or stop disease progression.

"The biggest impact might be down the road when disease-modifying therapies become available," said Holland. "What works best for men might not work best for women. The same may be true for e4 carriers versus non-carriers."

He added that results also feed back into clinical trial design. The sex-makeup of the sample will affect the rates of decline for both natural progression (the placebo component) and, likely, the degree of disease modification in participants receiving therapy. So a sex-based sub-analysis might be appropriate.

"Additionally, in clinical practice it may be important to expect higher rates of decline for women patients, to help anticipate when stages of decline that significantly alter quality of life would be reached."

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our alzheimer's / dementia section for the latest news on this subject.

Co-authors include Rahul S. Desikan, Department of Radiology, and Anders M. Dale, Departments of Radiology and Neurosciences, UC San Diego.

This research was funded, in part, by National Institutes of Health grants R01AG031224, R01AG22381, U54NS056883, P50NS22343 and P50MH081755; National Institute on Aging grant K01AG029218; and NIH-National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering grant T32 EB005970.

University of California - San Diego

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Study Of Dogs With Microchimerism Should Improve Understanding Of Disease In Humans

Main Category: Cancer / Oncology
Also Included In: Veterinary
Article Date: 12 Jul 2013 - 0:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Study Of Dogs With Microchimerism Should Improve Understanding Of Disease In Humans

Some people possess a small number of cells in their bodies that are not genetically their own; this condition is known as microchimerism. It is difficult to determine potential health effects from this condition because of humans' relatively long life-spans. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have found that microchimerism can be found in dogs as well. Jeffrey Bryan, an associate professor of oncology at the MU College of Veterinary Medicine and director of Comparative Oncology and Epigenetics Laboratory, says this discovery will help doctors determine what diseases humans with microchimerism may be more likely to develop during their lifetimes.

"Dogs have a much shorter lifespan than humans, which allows us, as researchers, to better monitor what diseases they may develop throughout their entire lives," Bryan said. "We already have some evidence that microchimerism may increase risk of thyroid disease while lowering the risk of breast cancer in women. Finding microchimerism in dogs allows us to track this condition over a lifespan of about 10 years, as opposed to the 70 or 80 years of a human life. This will make it much easier to determine any increased risk of or protection from other diseases brought on by microchimerism."

"Our study demonstrates that male microchimerism of probable fetal origin occurs in the pet dog population," said Sandra Axiak-Bechtel, an assistant professor of oncology at the MU College of Veterinary Medicine. "Evidence exists in women that fetal microchimerism may have conflicting roles in disease formation. The pet dog represents an excellent model of many ailments in people, and the presence of fetal microchimerism in dogs will allow studies which further clarify its role in health and disease."

Microchimerism most often occurs when a mother gives birth to a child. Sometimes, cells from that child are left in the mothers' body and continue to live, despite being of a different genetic makeup than surrounding cells. Those cells can then be passed on to other children the mother may have later. Cells also can be passed on through blood transfusions as well as bone marrow and organ transplants.

In their study published in PLOS ONE, Bryan and Axiak-Bechtel, along with MU researchers Senthil Kumar, a co-investigator in this study and assistant research professor and assistant director of the Comparative Oncology and Epigenetics Laboratory, and Sara Hansen, a comparative medicine resident at MU, studied 90 golden retrievers and found that 36 percent of the dogs had microchimerism. Closer to 40 percent of female dogs that were at least eight years post-pregnancy had the condition.

Axiak-Bechtel, Bryan, and Kumar plan on continuing their research to follow the lifespans of dogs with microchimerism to determine to what diseases those dogs may be susceptible. Bryan and Kumar also received a new grant for more than $400,000 to study epigenetic biomarkers in dogs, which will ultimately enhance diagnosis and treatment of dogs with cancer.

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