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Preeclampsia can be a life-threatening complication of pregnancy, but a new blood test can help predict a woman’s risk for the condition while she is in her first trimester, the test’s maker said Wednesday. It’s the first test in the United States that can be used between 11 and 14 weeks gestation to determine the risk of preeclampsia before 34 weeks of pregnancy, Labcorp said in a news release announcing the launch of the test. “By giving healthcare providers another tool to assess preeclampsia risk in their pregnant patients with objective biomarkers, we’re helping to advance prenatal care and improve outcomes for mothers and their babies,” Labcorp’s Chief Medical and Scientific Officer Dr. Brian Caveney said in the news release. Roughly one in 25 U.S. pregnancies is affected by preeclampsia, which poses an even greater risk for Black women, who experience the condition at a 60% higher rate than white women do, the company noted. Still, some doctors wonder how much it will help. “It is currently unclear how useful the Labcorp test will be in accurately predicting risk for developing preeclampsia and whether it is appropriate for all pregnant patients,” Dr. Christopher Zahn, interim CEO at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), told CNN. “Before a screening test can be successfully employed, there needs to be an evidence-based intervention to either prevent or reduce the impact of… read on > read on >

In a small pilot study, some young women looking to lose weight on a low-calorie keto diet got an unexpected benefit: Their acne began to clear up. “These findings represent an opportunity to control a skin disease that affects most teenagers and many adults at some point in their lifetimes, causing distress, embarrassment, anxiety and low self-confidence among sufferers, robbing them of their quality of life,” said lead study author Luigi Barrea, of the Università Telematica Pegaso in Naples, Italy. His team presented its findings Tuesday at the European Congress on Obesity on Vienna, Italy. As Barrea’s group explained, acne is thought to be a chronic inflammatory illness affecting what’s known as the pilosebaceous unit: the hair follicle, hair shaft and nearby sebaceous gland. About 9% of the world’s population is affected by acne, largely in the teenage years. According to the Italian researchers, acne has long been linked with obesity, perhaps because both conditions are tied to rising inflammation and oxidative stress. Could the ketogenic diet fight that underlying inflammation and oxidative stress? “While the role of diet in acne is inconclusive, the very low-calorie ketogenic diet is known for aiding weight loss and generating anti-inflammatory ketone bodies that provide energy when dietary carbohydrates are scarce, as well as promoting resistance against inflammatory and oxidative stress,” Barrea explained in a meeting news release. “We thought… read on > read on >

A competitive game with a potential cash reward appeared to help overweight British men lose weight, researchers report. The incentive was winning the “Game of Stones” — a stone is a British measurement of body weight equal to 14 pounds — and pocketing the equivalent of just over $500 in American dollars if the man achieved weight-loss goals. Weight loss was more successful among men who engaged in Games of Stones versus those who weren’t offered the challenge, said a team led by Dr. Pat Hoddinott, of the University of Stirling in Scotland. Nevil Chesterfield, 68, lost weight and called Game of Stones “a real success for me.” “The financial incentive was important — it did give the project tremendous credibility when I explained it to my peer group,” he said in a news release from the University of Bristol, which partnered in the research. “Partaking in a university study sounds worthy, and the fact that it is intended to inform future health policy gives seriousness, but the payments for hitting targets takes it to new heights, particularly with male friends. To them, it becomes something more than some sort of diet,” Chesterfield said. The premise of Game of Stones was simple. Men living with obesity were promised the cash reward if they met three weight-loss targets: 5% weight loss at three months, 10% at… read on > read on >

“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 >

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 >

New mothers who like to smoke marijuana might wind up exposing their babies to THC through their own breast milk, a new study says. THC, the intoxicating compound in cannabis, dissolves in the fats contained in human milk, researchers found. Mother’s milk produced by weed users always had detectable amounts of THC, even when the mothers had abstained for 12 hours, results show. The amounts detected were low – infants receive an average of 0.07 milligrams of THC per day through breast milk, researchers estimate. By comparison, a common low-dose edible contains 2 milligrams of THC. However, researchers emphasize that no one knows how any amount of THC might affect an infant or its development. “Breastfeeding parents need to be aware that if they use cannabis, their infants are likely consuming cannabinoids via the milk they produce, and we do not know whether this has any effect on the developing infant,” lead researcher Courtney Meehan, a biological anthropologist at Washington State University, said in a news release. Worse, there’s no consistent time when a weed user can expect the THC concentrations in their breast milk to peak and then decline. Guidelines for new mothers say to wait at least two hours after drinking alcohol before breastfeeding. There are no similar guidelines for cannabis. For participants who used cannabis just once during the study, THC in… read on > read on >

Nine of 10 American adults are in the early, middle or late stages of a syndrome that leads to heart disease, a new report finds, and almost 10% have the disease already. “Poor cardiovascular, kidney, and metabolic health is widespread among the U.S. population,” concludes a team led by Dr. Muthiah Vaduganathan of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. Researchers looked specifically at rates of what the American Heart Association has dubbed cardiovascular, kidney and metabolic (CKM) syndrome — interrelated factors that progress with time and, if left unchecked, lead to heart disease. CKM syndrome is divided into four stages: Stage 1: Excess fat buildup in the body (a risk factor for poor health) Stage 2: Emergence of other metabolic risk factors (for example, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes) Stage 3: Emergence of high-risk kidney disease and/or a high predicted risk of heart disease being diagnosed within the next 10 years Stage 4: A diagnosis of full-blown heart disease, with or without kidney disease To find out how many Americans might fall into one of these four categories, the Boston team tracked U.S. federal health survey data for 2011 through 2020. Among adults age 20 or older, only 10.6% did not have some level of CKM syndrome, the researchers reported May 8 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. … read on > read on >

A potentially dangerous spike in blood pressure known as preeclampsia can occur in 1 in every 25 pregnancies, but an accurate test to spot those women at highest risk has remained elusive. Now, Canadian researchers at Université Laval in Québec City say they’ve developed an algorithm that seems to do just that. In their study of more than 7,000 pregnant women, the test outperformed standard measures to pinpoint high-risk pregnancies. That could be a great tool for doctors, who can advise such women to take daily low-dose aspirin to lower their odds for preeclampsia. “Using this new screening model, treatment decisions were based on each individual’s personal risk,” said study senior author Dr. Emmanuel Bujold, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the university. “With their personal risk calculated, it’s much easier for a woman to make the right decision,” he explained. “For example, if she chooses to take daily low-dose aspirin, she is much more likely to follow through because it’s based on personalized screening test.” The findings were published May 6 in the journal Hypertension. Preeclampsia is defined as a dangerous rise in blood pressure during pregnancy — anything over 140/90 mm Hg. Unchecked preclampsia is one of the leading causes of maternal death worldwide. For the mother, preeclampsia can cause headaches, vision changes and swelling of the hands, feet, face or eyes.… read on > read on >

Advanced liver cirrhosis can push levels of ammonia in the blood to hazardous levels, but skipping meat at mealtime can help reverse that, new research shows. “It was exciting to see that even small changes in your diet, like having one meal without meat once in a while, could benefit your liver by lowering harmful ammonia levels in patients with cirrhosis,” said study lead author Dr. Jasmohan Bajaj, a gastroenterologist at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. As the research team explained, bacteria in your gut automatically generate ammonia as they help the body digest food. In folks with healthy livers, the organ takes that ammonia and sends it to the kidneys, where its excreted harmlessly via urine. However, cirrhosis impairs the organ’s ability to process ammonia so that it builds up in a toxic way. Ammonia can even travel to the brain and trigger confusion or delirium, the researchers noted. That’s called hepatic encephalopathy, and without treatment it can lead to coma and death. Diet can play a big role in these processes, because Western diets low in fiber and high in meat and carbohydrates boost levels of ammonia produced by the gut. So, what if a culprit like meat was cut out of the mix? The new study involved 30 meat-eating adults treated for cirrhosis at the Richmond VA Medical Center. Patients were asked… read on > read on >