June 30, 2023 — At the ASMBS Annual Meeting this week, a new study of major bad outcomes in people with both obesity and sleep apnea reminds us why metabolic surgery remains an important option for comprehensive obesity care. The risk of death, heart attacks, strokes, and other major bad cardiovascular outcomes is 37 percent lower if a person […]
June 12, 2023 — In many ways, COVID seems to be in the rear view mirror. Travel, meetings, and busyness have cranked up to a level that makes it seem like the pause we took for the pandemic is a distant memory. But not for folks who develop long COVID – which is about ten percent of people who […]
June 1, 2023 — New research provides impressive evidence for the contribution of obesity to the risk of a range of mental health disorders. These include depression, psychosis, eating and personality disorders. The added risk is apparent at all ages, in both men and women. Furthermore, these data suggest that the mental health burden of obesity is greater in […]
March 21, 2023 — Both colon cancer and obesity are rising in young people. In fact, a new report in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians suggests colorectal cancer is on the way to becoming the deadliest cancer for people under 50. While colon cancer death rates are dropping for older persons, they are headed in the opposite direction […]
February 17, 2023 — NAFLD – the accumulation of fat in the liver without excessive alcohol use – is one of the key reasons that obesity is a real and chronic disease. It is one of the common complications of obesity, and it is rising in parallel with obesity – most disturbingly in children. Of course, losing weight is […]
July 8, 2022 — In a word, yes. COVID vaccines are still protecting people with obesity. Two new studies remind us that, although people with obesity are more vulnerable to this virus, the immune response is still good in this population. This is true of the immune response to infection as well as the protection afforded by vaccination. A […]
July 2, 2022 — Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis – NASH – has yet again handed drug researchers disappointing results, this time in a study of semaglutide. Researchers presented this phase 2 study at the International Liver Congress in London last weekend. The whole point of a phase 2 study is to see if a drug works for a specific purpose. On […]
June 4, 2022 — “The best possible evidence on the value of intentional weight loss to reduce cancer risk and mortality.” This is how the Cleveland Clinic’s Steven Nissen describes the release of a new study in JAMA yesterday. These observations come from a matched cohort study of 30,318 persons by Ali Aminian and colleagues. They found a 48 […]
May 3, 2022 — One of the most interesting obesity conferences of the year is getting started this week. ECO2022 brings together a nice mix of science and policy with a balance that’s refreshing. So it’s fitting that the opening story is all about the burden of neglecting clinical care for obesity. In this case, the headline research from […]
April 20, 2022 — Every year in the U.S., surgeons perform about 800,000 knee replacements. By comparison, fewer than half as many – less than 300,000 – bariatric surgeries occur each year. Especially in younger patients needing knee replacement, obesity is quite common. In one study, 72 percent of knee replacement patients under 60 had obesity. So it’s quite […]
