Archive for the ‘Scientific Meetings & Publications’ Category

The Possibility of a Better Measure for Dietary Disease Risk

August 30, 2024 — Scientists have a pretty good handle on how to predict a person’s risk of diabetes and how to diagnose it. The gold standard is a glucose tolerance test. How does your body handle glucose? But diabetes is just one dimension of dietary disease risk and nutrition scientists are hungry for a better way to predict […]

Clustering Errors Form a Confusing Thicket in Obesity Research

August 29, 2024 — It is a pain to sort through the errors that find their way into research publications. Even more painful is the experience of having to retract flawed publications. So when the Editor in Chief of Childhood Obesity retracted a fundamentally flawed, cluster-randomized trial, we see a reason to celebrate. Errors that involve clustering designs in […]

A Simple and Cost-Effective Way to Reduce Type 2 Diabetes?

August 28, 2024 — Type 2 diabetes prevalence is up and the Lancet Regional Health has a simple way to reduce it. Daniel Windred and colleagues write: “Advising people to turn off their lights at night, or use lights that reduce the circadian impact (dim and “warm” light), is a simple, cost-effective, and easily-implementable recommendation that may promote cardiometabolic […]

Obesity Drug Pricing Remains Stuck in the Spotlight

August 27, 2024 — How big might the semaglutide budget bomb be? The authors of a new brief report in Annals of Internal Medicine today are making a point. How threatening can we make this sound? Right up front in their title, they label their estimates as the “maximum costs of expanded Medicare coverage of semaglutide for cardiovascular risk […]

A Bias for Medical Neglect in Obesity

August 26, 2024 — New research reminds us of something that just about any person living with obesity can tell you. The prevailing bias against people living with obesity favors medical neglect. Especially for someone living with significant obesity, it is all too common to have providers dismiss medical complaints or blame them on obesity and simply instruct the […]

What Do Microplastics in Our Brains Mean for Metabolic Health?

August 25, 2024 — When neuroscientists coined the phrase brain plasticity, they were certainly not thinking about microplastics accumulating in our brains. But unfortunately, it seems this is a phenomenon with implications we need to study. New NIH-funded research, published as a preprint, suggests these tiny particles are building up at an alarming rate. But it does not tell […]

Another Piece of the Heart Failure Puzzle for Semaglutide

August 24, 2024 — Novo Nordisk is creeping up on an indication for semaglutide in people with obesity and heart failure. Today in Lancet, we have another piece of the puzzle to suggest this drug might help. In a prespecified analysis from the SELECT study, researchers found that semaglutide reduced heart attacks, strokes, deaths, and problems with heart failure […]

The Enduring Fascination with Causal Pathways for Obesity

August 23, 2024 — A new paper this week reminds us of the enduring fascination with causal pathways for obesity. Why has the prevalence grown so relentlessly? How can we reverse it? This preoccupation has been the source of controversy and mistakes in dealing with obesity. One of the more memorable controversies is the back-and-forth debates between David Ludwig […]

Seriously? That Sandwich Might Give You Type 2 Diabetes?

August 22, 2024 — From time to time, nutritional epidemiologists take themselves entirely too seriously. This week is one of those times. Health reporting is full of warnings that your lunch sandwich might give you type 2 diabetes. The senior author of the paper in Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology causing this stir, Professor Nita Forouhi, expresses no caution about […]

Let’s Reflect Upon 94% Prevention of Diabetes with Tirzepatide

August 21, 2024 — Yesterday, Eli Lilly and Company announced an impressive topline number from the results of a three-year study of tirzepatide in adults with obesity or overweight and prediabetes. That number was 94% prevention of progression from prediabetes to diabetes with tirzepatide. No, it was not 100%. But this is awfully close. Historical Context We will have to […]