With the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) still under fire for failing to monitor the safety of a popular diabetes drug after it hit the market, researchers have released a new study revealing potentially dangerous risks of another widely prescribed medication: the weight-loss drug Meridia (sibutramine).
The report, published on Wednesday in the New England Journal [...]
Some families, alas, are fatter than others. But for dieters continually at war with their genes, there’s good news in a study published in this week’s PLoS Medicine: they can burn off 40% of their genetic predisposition to obesity by exercising.
Led by Dr. Ruth Loos from the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit in Cambridge, U.K., [...]
WEDNESDAY, Sept. 1 (HealthDay News) — A new study is linking the popular weight loss drug Meridia to an increased risk of non-fatal heart attacks and stroke, although taking the drug did not seem to up the risk of death in patients with a history of heart problems.
The finding is stirring mixed reactions from experts.
According [...]
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A study funded by Abbott Laboratories offered more detailed evidence that its weight-loss drug Meridia increases heart risks, prompting renewed calls by consumer advocates and others to pull the drug from the market.
Final data from the so-called SCOUT study, published on Wednesday, showed Meridia increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes [...]
TUESDAY, Aug. 31 (HealthDay News) — Exercise can reduce a person’s genetic predisposition to obesity by 40 percent, finds a new English study.
Researchers looked at 20,430 people in Norwich and focused on genetic variants known to increase the risk of obesity. Most people had inherited 10 to 13 of these variants from their parents, but [...]
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Losing the weight gained during pregnancy is a real struggle for many new mothers. But dropping just 10 pounds between pregnancies may help many women diagnosed with a dangerous complication during the first pregnancy to avoid a recurrence the second time around.
Preeclampsia, which is characterized by high blood pressure, protein [...]
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – Brazilians’ waistlines are bulging, belying the country’s image as a place of buff sun worshipers and lithe soccer players.
Nearly half of adult Brazilians are overweight and about 15 percent are obese, Brazil’s IBGE social statistics agency said on Friday, citing the results of a national study carried out with the [...]
LONDON (AFP) – British health campaigners warned Friday that surgery was being seen as an easy option to tackle obesity after new figures showed weight-loss operations have soared here in the past five years.
Figures from the state-run National Health Service’s Information Centre showed 4,246 procedures for obesity were carried out in England in 2008-9, up [...]
LONDON (Reuters) – Use of weight-loss surgery has increased 10-fold in hospitals in England since 2000 and those who have gastric bands fitted can reduce their risk of early death and cut health service costs, scientists said on Friday.
In a study published in the British Medical Journal, researchers said one reason for the rapid rise [...]
PARIS (AFP) – Michel Montignac, author of worldwide best-sellers on weight loss in the 1980s and 1990s, has died aged 66, French officials said Thursday.
Montignac, who died last weekend, developed a crash diet based on never eating “bad” carbohydrates at the same time as fats after suffering from obesity himself as a child and battling [...]
