obesity

The obesity epidemic and how science may be able to impact it is the focus of the upcoming annual conference of the Institute for Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis. Graham Colditz, MD, DrPH, deputy director of the Institute for Public Health and a disease prevention expert at Siteman Cancer Center, will deliver the keynote address.

Obese women who use donor eggs to become pregnant through in vitro fertilization are just as likely to become pregnant as normal weight women, according to a new report. Pictured is the study’s first author, Emily Jungheim, MD, left, observing as Mary Bade uses assisted reproductive technology to inject a single sperm into an egg.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that a popular artificial sweetener can modify how the body handles sugar. They analyzed the sweetener sucralose in 17 severely obese people and found it can influence how the body reacts to glucose.

Teens who were depressed as children are far more likely than their peers to be obese, smoke cigarettes and lead sedentary lives, even if they no longer suffer from depression. The research, by scientists at the School of Medicine and the University of Pittsburgh, suggests that depression, even in children, can increase the risk of heart problems later in life.

Jeffrey I. Gordon, MD, has been honored with awards from the National Academy of Sciences and the Association of American Medical Colleges for his pioneering research to define the human gut microbiome.

There’s nothing wrong with a cookie or a glass of eggnog at the holidays, says Debra Haire-Joshu, PhD, director of the Center for Obesity Prevention and Policy Research and the Center for Diabetes Translation Research at Washington University in St. Louis and associate dean for research at the Brown School. The key, Haire-Joshu says, is balance.

Our bodies contain far more microbial genes than human genes. And a new study suggests that just as human DNA varies from person to person, so too does the massive collection of microbial DNA in the intestine.

People with diabetes often develop clogged arteries that cause heart disease. New research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has found that when vitamin D levels are adequate in people with diabetes, blood vessels are less likely to clog. But in patients with insufficient vitamin D, immune cells bind to blood vessels near the heart, then trap cholesterol to block those blood vessels.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a potential target for treating diabetes and obesity. Studying mice, they found that when the target protein was disabled, the animals became more sensitive to insulin and were less likely to get fat.

Giving antibiotics before cesarean section surgery rather than just after the newborn’s umbilical cord is clamped cuts the infection rate at the surgical site in half, according to infection disease specialist David K. Warren, MD, and his colleagues at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Barnes-Jewish Hospital.