Featured

• The "metabolic winter" hypothesis: a cause of the current epidemics of obesity and cardiometabolic disease.
• Capsule robot for obesity treatment with wireless powering and communication.

Headline vs. Study

• Headline: Dentists help in fight against obesity.
• Study: An ecological correlation between adult obesity rates and prevalence of dentists by county.
• Related: Spurious associations in oral epidemiological research: the case of dental flossing and obesity.
• Headline: Is your BRAIN making you fat? Obese people are hard-wired to want food when they smell cooking or see adverts, study claims.
• Study: Striatal dopamine D2-like receptor correlation patterns with human obesity and opportunistic eating behavior.

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Popular Beliefs

• RCT: Adoption of cardiovascular risk reduction guidelines has no significant effect on childhood BMI.
• “This study suggests that the impact of a [5% soda] tax had a homogeneous effect (and statistically insignificant) across different demographic groups”.
• In meta-analysis in children, physical activity interventions were not associated with reductions of BMI.
• Fat Thoughts and Fat Content Do Not Affect Eating Behavior in Women.

Surgery

• Blocking the Hunger Nerve.
• Robot-assisted prostatectomy in obese patients: how influential is obesity on operative outcomes?
• RCT: Impact of Extent of Antral Resection on Surgical Outcomes of Sleeve Gastrectomy for Morbid Obesity.
• Morbidity, Mortality, and Weight Loss Outcomes After Reoperative Bariatric Surgery in the USA.
• Intestinal Bypass Surgery for Morbid Obesity: Long-Term Results.

Stigma

• Perceived weight discrimination and C-reactive protein.
• Do portrayals of women in action convey another ideal that women with little self-determination feel obligated to live up to? Viewing effects on body image evaluations and eating behaviors.
• Impact of non-physician health professionals' BMI on obesity care and beliefs.

Psychology

• The Influence of Friend Presence and Discussion on Young Adults’ Responses to Anti-sugary Drinks Television Ads.
• Diet and Exercise in Parenthood: A Social Control Perspective.
• “Eating addiction”, rather than “food addiction”, better captures addictive-like eating behavior.
• Eating is addictive but sugar, fat are not like drugs, study says.
• Food-related attentional bias. Word versus pictorial stimuli and the importance of stimuli calorific value.

Breast Feeding

• Breast vs. bottle feeding in rhesus monkeys.
• Obese women who breastfeed their children for at least four months are less likely to retain their pregnancy weight.

Computational

• The effects of taxing sugar-sweetened beverages across different income groups.
• Cost-effectiveness of health promotion targeting physical activity and healthy eating in mental health care.

Economics

• “This is the first study to demonstrate that social position rather than material conditions may explain the impact of money on human health.”.
• Shopping around? How households adjusted food spending over the Great Recession.
• The cost-effectiveness of weight management programmes in a postnatal population.

Obesogens

• Annual mean residential black carbon was associated with higher leptin levels.
• Effects of particulate matter air pollution in genetic type II diabetes mellitus.
• Food Choices, Novelty Consumption and Obesity: Evidence from the East German Transition to Capitalism.

Drugs

• Metformin Improves Aspects of NAFLD in Diet-Induced Obesity.
• Synthesis and Biological Evaluation of 3-Methyl-5-phenylthieno[2,3-d]pyrimidine-2,4(1H,3H)-dione Derivatives for the Treatment of Diet-Induced Obesity.
• Combined ETA blockade and chlorthalidone treatment in a rat model of metabolic syndrome.
• Aspirin as Primary Prevention of Acute Coronary Heart Disease Events.
• Contrave Gains Approval by FDA.

Exercise

• RCT: The Synergy Effect of Weight-Bearing Circuit Training and Aloe QDM Complex on Obese Middle Aged Women.
• The Effects of 12 Weeks Regular Aerobic Exercise on Brain-derived Neurotrophic Factor and Inflammatory Factors in Juvenile Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus.
• A Review of Adolescent High-Intensity Interval Training.

Clinical

• The Ethics of Childhood Obesity Treatment.
• RCT: Effectiveness of Three Different Walking Prescription Durations on Total Physical Activity in Normal- and Overweight Women.
• Social Networking Strategies That Aim To Reduce Obesity Have Achieved Significant Although Modest Results.
• RCT: Effect of Reversible Intermittent Intra-abdominal Vagal Nerve Blockade on Morbid Obesity.
• Culturally appropriate health education for people in ethnic minority groups with type 2 diabetes mellitus.
• Long-term weight status in regainers after weight loss by lifestyle intervention: status and challenges.
• Assessment and Lifestyle Management of Patients With Obesity -Clinical Recommendations From Systematic Reviews.
• Experiential or behavioral processes: Which one is prominent in physical activity?

Epidemiology

• Seatbelt usage: is there an association with obesity?
• Adenovirus 36 Antibodies Associated With Clinical Diagnosis of Overweight/Obesity but Not BMI Gain: A Military Cohort Study.
• The Effects of Obesity and Age on Balance Recovery After Slipping.
• Association of Obesity in Early Adulthood and Middle Age With Incipient Left Ventricular Dysfunction and Structural Remodeling.
• Age and BMI but not salt associated with SBP after multiple adjustments.
• Associations Between Trends in Race/Ethnicity, Aging, and BMI With Diabetes Prevalence in the United States.
• The Association of Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Intake During Infancy With Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Intake at 6 Years of Age.

Mortality

• No Obesity Paradox—BMI Incapable of Adequately Capturing the Relation of Obesity with All-Cause Mortality: An Inception Diabetes Cohort Study.
• BMI and mortality among Japanese patients with type 2 diabetes.

Methods

• Using animal-borne cameras to study the foraging behaviour of large marine predators.
• Evaluating predictors of an individual’s dietary intake latent value under different mixed models.
• A comparison of confounding adjustment methods with an application to early life determinants of childhood obesity.
• Technical note: Alternatives to reduce adipose tissue sampling bias.
• An ex vivo model for evaluating bioenergetics in aortic rings.
• Reanalyses of Randomized Clinical Trial Data.
• Commentary on 'Reanalyses of Randomized Clinical Trial Data": Open Access to Clinical Trials Data.

Transgenerational Effects

• Pre-gestational maternal obesity impairs endocrine pancreas in male F1 and F2 progeny.
• Maternal Caloric Restriction prior to Pregnancy Increases the Body Weight of the Second-Generation Male Offspring and Shortens Their Longevity in Rats.

Food

• Nutritional and Safety Evaluation of Local Weight-Gain Formulas in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Markets.
• Alabama Sea Urchins Provide Gulf Seafood Delicacies Right Here at Home.
• A mid-morning snack of almonds generates satiety and appropriate adjustment of subsequent food intake in healthy women.
• Controversial Diet Author Gary Taubes Tackles Sugar's Negative Effects.
• The Role of Sweet Taste in Satiation and Satiety.
• Consumption of a highly palatable food induces a lasting place-conditioning memory in marmoset monkeys.
• Physiological Regulation of Short-term Food Intake in Children During Puberty.

Evolution, Energetics, & Ecology

• Abundance, diversity, and feeding behavior of coral reef butterflyfishes at Lord Howe Island.
• Pacific walrus use of higher trophic level prey and the relation to sea ice extent, body condition, and trichinellosis.
• The Actively Foraging Desert Lizard Pedioplanis husabensis Behaviorally Optimizes its Energetic Economy.

Caloric Restriction

• AMPK Modulates Tissue and Organismal Aging in a Non-Cell-Autonomous Manner.
• Does SIRT-1 Mediate Calorie Restriction and Prolong Life?–A Mini Review.
• Calorie restriction and corticosterone elevation during lactation can each modulate adult male fear and anxiety-like behavior.

Brown Fat

• MiR-34a inhibits beige and brown fat formation in obesity in part by suppressing 2 adipocyte FGF21 signaling and SIRT1 function.
• Inducible brown adipocytes in subcutaneous inguinal white fat: the 2 role of continuous sympathetic stimulation.

Commentary

• F1000 Recommendation of Hawthorne effect with transient behavioral and biochemical changes in a randomized controlled sleep extension trial of chronically short-sleeping obese adults: implications for the design and interpretation of clinical studies.
• 3 Ways Much of Obesity Policy Is Like Human Sacrifice.
• Science On Diets Is Low In Essential Information.
• F1000 Recommendation: Racism, segregation, and risk of obesity in the Black Women's Health Study.
• What’s the Risk/Benefit of a Home-Cooked Dinner?
• It Ain't Necessarily So: Why Much of the Medical Literature Is Wrong.
• Why won’t the Nutrition Elite Treat us like Animals?
• Nutrient-Content Claims — Guidance or Cause for Confusion?

Basic Science

• Conditional knockout of the leptin receptor in the colonic epithelium revealed the local effects of leptin receptor signaling in the progression of colonic tumors in mice.
• Counterregulation of insulin by leptin as key component of autonomic regulation of body weight.
• The Thermogenic Effect of Leptin Is Dependent on a Distinct Population of Prolactin-Releasing Peptide Neurons in the Dorsomedial Hypothalamus.
• Negative energy balance affects imprint stability in oocytes recovered from postpartum dairy cows.
• Acute mTOR inhibition induces insulin resistance and alters substrate utilization in vivo.
• 5-Caffeoylquinic Acid Decreases Diet-Induced Obesity in Rats by Modulating PPARα and LXRα Transcription.
• ​IL-37 protects against obesity-induced inflammation and insulin resistance.

General Science

• Do broccoli and green tea fight breast cancer?
• “The negative correlation between effect size and samples size, and the biased distribution of p values indicate pervasive publication bias in the entire field of psychology”.
• Erratum: "instruments for assessing risk of bias and other methodological criteria of animal studies: omission of well-established methods".
• Cancer may be a pathway to cell survival under persistent hypoxia and elevated ROS: A model for solid-cancer initiation and early development.
• U.S. Science Suffering From Booms And Busts In Funding.
• When Scientists Give Up.
• A “Present” for the Future The Unexpected Value of Rediscovery.

Video-Audio

• Nutrient Partitioning: It’s Not About the Food.
• Rob Waterland on NPR on NIH funding levels.

Announcements

• UAB Seeks Chair, Department of Computer and Information Sciences.
• Announcement of Data Release and Call for Participation 2014 i2b2/UTHealth Shared-Tasks and Workshop on Challenges in Natural Language Processing for Clinical Data (including obesity).
• RWJF Releases The State of Obesity 2014.
• ILSI Europe investigates diet, aging, and brain function. Speaker presentations are online now.
• The Global Obesity Prevention Center at Johns Hopkins invites you to attend a Symposium on: The Social Network: A Systems Approach to Childhood Obesity.