If your child is obese, new research suggests that those extra pounds can alter the results of routine blood tests. “We performed the first comprehensive analysis of the effect of obesity on routine blood tests in a large community population of children and found that almost 70% of the blood tests studied were affected,” said study first author Victoria Higgins, from the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and the University of Toronto. Higgins’ team looked at more than 1,300 healthy children and teens in and around Toronto and found that obesity affected 24 routine blood tests, including those for liver function, inflammation markers, lipids and iron. The study was published Dec. 17 in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. “As clinical decisions are often guided by normative ranges based on a large healthy population, understanding how and which routine blood tests are affected by obesity is important to correctly interpret blood test results,” Higgins explained in a journal news release. It’s unclear if obesity’s impact on blood tests are a sign of early disease, but doctors should be aware of these findings when interpreting several types of blood tests in children, the researchers advised. “We hope our study results will assist pediatricians and family physicians to better assess children and adolescents with different degrees of overweight or obesity,” Higgins said. There’s been a…  read on >

Rising obesity rates worldwide may be contributing to the climate crisis, researchers report. “Our analysis suggests that, in addition to beneficial effects on morbidity, mortality and health care costs, managing obesity can favorably affect the environment as well,” said study corresponding author Faidon Magkos, from the department of nutrition, exercise and sports at the University of Copenhagen, in Denmark. Like other oxygen-dependent creatures, humans emit carbon dioxide that’s produced by metabolic processes necessary to live, the scientists explained. The amount of carbon dioxide — a greenhouse gas — produced by a species is determined by its average metabolic rate, average body size and the total number of individuals of the species. Obese people produce more carbon dioxide than those of normal weight, the researchers said. Also, obese people consume greater quantities of food and beverages that need to be produced and transported to them, and transportation of obese people requires more consumption of fossil fuels. This means higher carbon dioxide emissions related to food production and transportation for obese people, the study authors explained. The researchers estimated that obesity contributes to an extra 700 megatons of carbon dioxide emissions per year worldwide, or about 1.6% of all human-caused emissions. Overall, being obese is associated with about 20% more greenhouse gas emissions (carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide) than being a normal weight, according to the…  read on >

Long hours spent working will do no favors for your blood pressure, a new Canadian study suggests. The five-year study tracked the working hours and blood pressure readings of 3,500 white-collar workers at three public institutions in the province of Quebec. Compared to those who worked less than 35 hours a week, those who worked 49 or more hours each week had a 70% higher risk of what’s known as “masked” hypertension — high blood pressure that can be missed during a routine medical appointment, but is detected when blood pressure is tracked at home. Lots of overtime was also tied to a 66% higher risk of “sustained” hypertension — high blood pressure that’s recorded both in and out of healthcare settings. The study couldn’t prove cause-and-effect, but even a few extra working hours per week seemed to matter to heart health. For example, people who worked between 41 and 48 hours a week had a 54% higher risk of masked hypertension and a 42% higher risk of sustained hypertension, the researchers reported Dec. 19 in the journal Hypertension. The exact connection between overtime and higher blood pressure isn’t clear, said lead author Xavier Trudel. “The link between long working hours and high blood pressure in the study was about the same for men as for women,” noted Trudel. He’s an assistant professor in the…  read on >

Caring for a grandchild might be the best way to fight the isolation of old age, new research suggests. This conclusion is based on 2014 data collected as part of an ongoing German survey of older adults. Among the nearly 3,900 grandparents in the survey, more than 1,100 said they cared for a grandchild. Those who had grandchildren to care for had lower scores on loneliness and social isolation tests, and a larger social network than those who didn’t care for grandchildren. Meanwhile, grandparents who didn’t care for a grandchild had higher loneliness scores and were in regular contact with fewer people important to them, the study authors said. The findings were unchanged even after the researchers took into account factors such as marital status, domestic arrangements, household income, self-rated health, physical activity levels and depressive symptoms. The study can’t prove that taking care of grandchildren by itself makes older people less lonely, only that there appears to be an association. It might be that grandparents who felt less lonely and isolated to start with are more likely to care for a grandchild, said study author Eleanor Quirke, of the department for health economics and health services research at Hamburg-Eppendorf University Hospital, and colleagues. The study also didn’t account for how near to their grandchildren grandparents lived or how often they provided care, all of…  read on >

If you think vaping is less likely to harm your lungs than traditional cigarettes, think again. E-cigarettes have been touted as safer than tobacco smoke, but evidence is mounting that they are both damaging to your airways, U.K. researchers report. A team from the School of Pharmacy at Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland compared cigarette smoke and e-cigarette vapor on bacteria associated with smoking-related chronic lung disease. Specifically, they exposed the bacteria Haemophilus influenzae, Streptococcus pneumonia, Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa to both cigarette smoke and e-cigarette vapor. When exposed to either cigarette smoke or e-cigarette vapor, the bacteria made more biofilms. Biofilms are microbes involved in a wide variety of infections. Cigarette smoke and e-cigarette vapor may both increase the harmfulness of common lung germs and cause persistent infection, the researchers said. In another experiment, the researchers showed that human lung cells exposed to bacteria that had been exposed to cigarette smoke or e-cigarette vapor responded with increased production of Interleukin-8, a key factor tied to inflammation. “A recurring theme of this study is the similarity in the effect of exposure to cigarette smoke compared to e-cigarette vapor on how bacteria behave and how harmful they are. The findings indicate that the effects of vaping on common lung pathogens may be similar to those of smoking,” said researcher Deirdre Gilpin. The report was…  read on >