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“Skinny” fat cells might actually make it harder to lose weight and easier to pack on extra pounds, a new study says. Researchers say it’s possible to predict if someone’s going to gain weight based solely on the size of their fat cells. People with large fat cells tend to lose weight over time, and those with small fat cells tend to gain weight, according to a Swedish study scheduled for presentation at the European Congress on Obesity in Venice, Italy. It concludes Wednesday. “Our results suggest that the loss of large fat cells makes more of an impact on weight than the loss of small ones,” said researcher Peter Arner, a professor emeritus of medicine at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. “It is a bit like having a room filled to the top by few large balloons or many small ones,” he said in a news release. “It is easier to make empty space in the room by letting out air from the big rather than the small balloons.” On the other hand, he added, “it is easier to fill up the room if many small balloons increase their volume a bit, as compared with having few large balloons and filling them up just a bit.” For the study, researchers measured fat cell volume in the belly fat of 260 people with an average age… read on > read on >

About a third of young children who are allergic to peanuts will outgrow the allergy by the age of 10, and an antibody test might predict who those kids might be. Fluctuations in two immune system antibodies in the blood, called sIgG4 and sIgE, could point to a probable end to peanut allergy by about age 6, said a team from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia. “Children allergic to peanut who have decreasing antibody markers may benefit from additional visits with their allergist to determine the right time for follow-up food challenges to confirm if their peanut allergy has resolved,” noted study lead author and Murdoch graduate student Kayla Parker. Her team published the findings in the May issue of Allergy. The study involved 156 infants whose peanut allergy had been confirmed using standard peanut challenge testing. The children’s allergies were tracked at ages 4, 6 and 10 years with questionnaires, skin prick tests, blood tests and oral food challenges, Parker’s team said. In about a third of cases, the peanut allergy faded away naturally by the age of 10, with most of these cases resolving between ages 4 and 6. That seemed to coincide with steady declines in blood levels of sIgG4 and sIgE over time, the Melbourne team found. On the flip side, children “with high or increasing levels of… read on > read on >

Yoga can help improve the long-term health of people with heart failure, a new study has found. “Patients who practiced yoga on top of taking their medications felt better, were able to do more, and had stronger hearts than those who only took drugs for their heart failure,” lead researcher Dr. Ajit Singh of the Indian Council of Medical Research and Manipal Academy of Higher Education in India, said in a news release. Heart failure can have devastating effects on a person’s quality of life, leaving patients tired, breathless and unable to participate in their usual activities, researchers said. The study included 85 patients between 30 and 70 years of age in treatment for heart failure at Kasturba Hospital in Manipal, India. They all had undergone a heart procedure within the past year, and were taking heart medications. Researchers chose 40 people to participate in yoga, and 45 patients to just take their medicine as a control group. Over a week’s time, people in the yoga group were taught a yoga practice that focuses on breathing, meditation and relaxation. They then were advised to continue yoga on their own at home, in 50-minute sessions once a week. Researchers checked the heart structure and function of all participants at the beginning of the trial, six months in and at one year. The team measured the heart’s… read on > read on >

About 1 in 8 U.S. adults (12%) have tried a weight-loss drug like Wegovy, Ozempic, Zepbound or Mounjaro, a new KFF Health Tracking Poll says. About 6% are taking one right now, the poll found. Most patients say they use the drugs (61%) to treat a chronic condition like diabetes or heart disease, which can make it easier to obtain a prescription, the report says. More than 2 in 5 using the drugs are diabetics (43%), KFF found. This makes sense, given that the class of medications — GLP-1 agonists — was first developed as a treatment for type 2 diabetes. Further, about 1 in 4 people using the drugs (26%) have heart disease. In March, Wegovy became the first weight loss medication to receive approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a means of reducing risk of heart attack and stroke. Only about 22% are taking the drugs because a doctor diagnosed them as overweight or obese, but nearly 38% take the drugs solely to lose weight, the findings show. These drugs can be costly, with list prices topping $1,000 for a month’s supply before insurance coverage, rebates and discount coupons, KFF said. Insurance coverage for the drugs seems to make little difference in how patients perceive their affordability. About half of people (54%) who report having ever taken the drugs… read on > read on >

Athletes who push themselves to maximum performance don’t appear to pay a price when it comes to their longevity, a new study says. The first 200 athletes to run a mile in under four minutes actually outlived the general population by nearly five years on average, according to results published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. This counters the popular belief that extreme exercise might push the body too far and shorten life expectancy, researchers said. For centuries, some have promoted the idea of a “U-shaped” association between health and exercise, with either too little or too much physical activity doing damage to a person’s well being. “Our findings challenge the notion that extreme endurance exercise may be detrimental to longevity, reinforcing the benefits of exercise even at training levels required for elite performance,” concluded the team led by senior researcher Mark Haykowsky, research chair of aging and quality of life at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. The study marks the 70th anniversary of the first time a person ran a mile in under four minutes, researchers said. The English neurologist and athlete Roger Bannister first broke this milestone in May 1954. Bannister died in 2018, at the age of 88. For the study, researchers looked at the first 200 athletes to break the four-minute mile and compared them to the average person’s… read on > read on >

Robot-assisted total knee replacements tend to have better outcomes on average, a new study reports. Unfortunately, there’s a downside – having a surgical robot assist a human surgeon can make the procedure much more costly. Patients who had a robot-assisted knee replacement stayed in the hospital nearly a half-day less, and were significantly less likely to develop complications like infections, excessive blood loss, and fractures, dislocations or mechanical complications of their prosthetic, researchers report. However, robotic knee replacements cost an average $2,400 more than the conventional procedure, researchers found. Researchers said they hope the study will help doctors and patients make educated decisions regarding the best option for knee surgery. “As the population continues to age, there will be a greater demand for safe and effective total knee replacement surgery, also known as total knee arthroscopy (TKA),” lead researcher Dr. Senthil Sambandam, an assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, said in a news release. In knee replacement procedures, surgeons cut away bone damaged by arthritis and replace it with metal and plastic parts. Surgeons perform most knee replacements by hand, judging how much bone to remove based on training and expertise. However, a growing number of these procedures are performed using surgical robots that rely on imaging scans or anatomical landmarks to determine where to cut. Using a robot… read on > read on >

Antibiotic-resistant meningitis or severe, long-lasting joint infections: That’s what three U.S. “medical tourists” brought home after seeking out unapproved stem cell treatments in Mexico, according to a new report. The germ involved in all three cases was Mycobacterium abscessus, explained a team led by Dr. Minh-Vu Nguyen, an infectious disease specialist at National Jewish Health in Denver. “Stem cell treatments have been linked to bacterial infections, and procedure-related infection risks associated with medical tourism are known,” Nguyen and colleagues warned in their report. All three patients contracted their infections in late 2022 or early 2023, and “as of March 28, 2024, treatment is ongoing for all three,” according to the report. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, M. abscessus “is part of a group of environmental mycobacteria and is found in water, soil, and dust. It has been known to contaminate medications and products, including medical devices.” The bacterium typically infects soft tissue under the skin, but can also trigger serious lung infections, as well. It’s very difficult to transmit M. abscessus person-to-person, but “people with open wounds or who receive injections without appropriate skin disinfection may be at risk for infection by M. abscessus,” the CDC explained. “Infection with this bacterium usually does not improve with the usual antibiotics used to treat skin infections,” it noted. The cases outlined in… read on > read on >

People who eat large amounts of ultra-processed foods have a slightly higher risk of premature death than those who mostly shun the industrially produced eats, a new 30-year study says. Those who ate the most ultra-processed foods – an average of seven servings a day – had a 4% higher risk of death overall, and a 9% higher risk of death from causes other than cancer or heart disease. These higher risks of death “were mainly driven by meat/poultry/seafood based ready-to-eat products, sugar and artificially sweetened beverages, dairy based desserts, and ultra-processed breakfast foods,” wrote the team led by senior researcher Mingyang Song, an associate professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. Ultra-processed foods are made mostly from substances extracted from whole foods, like saturated fats, starches and added sugars. They also contain a wide variety of additives to make them more tasty, attractive and shelf-stable, including colors, emulsifiers, flavors and stabilizers. Examples include packaged baked goods, sugary cereals, ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat products, and deli cold cuts, researchers said. Mounting evidence has linked these foods to higher risks of obesity, heart disease, diabetes and bowel cancer, researchers said. However, few long-term studies have examined these products’ links to a person’s overall risk of death. For this study, researchers tracked the long-term health of nearly 75,000 female registered… read on > read on >

Colon cancer steadily increased among young people in the United States over the past two decades, with tweens enduring the most dramatic leap in cancer rates, a new study says. The rate of colon cancer grew 500% among kids 10 to 14 between 1999 and 2020, researchers will report at the Digestive Disease Week medical meeting in Washington, D.C., later this month. The rate also increased 333% among 15- to 19-year-olds, and 185% among 20- to 24-year-olds, researchers found. “Colorectal cancer is no longer considered just a disease of the elderly population,” lead researcher Dr. Islam Mohamed, an internal medicine resident physician at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said in a news release. For the study, researchers calculated 1999-2020 trends in colon cancer for people between 10 and 44 years of age, using U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data. Even though the rates rose among children and young adults, they still are much lower in sheer numbers than those of older adults, results show. Among 10- to 14-year-olds, 0.6 children per 100,000 were diagnosed with colon cancer in 2020, up from just 0.1 children per 100,000 in 1999. Similarly, diagnoses in 15- to 19-year-olds went from 0.3 to 1.3 per 100,000, and those among 20- to 24-year-olds rose from 0.7 to 2 per 100,000. The most common colon cancer symptoms were constipation,… read on > read on >

Every cold and flu season, folks are flooded with ads for zinc lozenges, sprays and syrups that promise to shorten their sniffles. Zinc might indeed reduce the duration of common cold symptoms by about two days, a new evidence review says. However, the evidence is not conclusive, and taking zinc can come with some unpleasant side effects, researchers said. “The evidence on zinc is far from settled,” senior researcher Susan Wieland, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said in a news release. “We need more research before we can be confident in its effects.” The theory behind zinc is that the essential mineral, which is found in many foods, might interfere with the cold virus’ ability to replicate in the nose, mouth and throat, researchers said. Lab studies have shown zinc can do this in petri dishes and mice, but human studies are needed to show if it will work in real people. For this review, researchers evaluated 19 human trials examining zinc as a cold treatment and 15 as a means of preventing colds. In particular, eight studies with nearly 1,000 participants combined investigated zinc as a treatment to reduce cold duration. The pooled results of those studies showed that it might help reduce the length of a cold by about two days, down from an average week-long duration… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

Could Having ‘Skinny’ Fat Cells Encourage Weight Gain?

Test Might Predict Which Kids Will Outgrow Peanut Allergy

Yoga Can Help Heart Failure Patients Stay Strong

One in 8 U.S. Adults Have Now Used Blockbuster Meds Like Ozempic

Pushing the Body in ‘Extreme’ Sports Won’t Shorten Life Span

The Pros & Cons of Robotic Knee Replacement Surgery

Americans Got Drug-Resistant Infections After Stem Cell Treatments in Mexico

More Data Suggests ‘Ultraprocessed’ Foods Can Shorten Your Life

Colon Cancer Cases Rising Sharply Among Children, Teens

Can Zinc Really Shorten a Cold?

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