Study Reveals Bariatric Surgery Less Effective in Middle-Aged Adults (ContributorNetwork)

If you're morbidly obese and middle-aged, weight-loss surgery may not decrease your chances of dying, according to a study published Sunday in the online Journal of the American Medical Association. Morbidly obese is defined as having a body mass index greater than 39 and generally means someone who is 100 pounds or more overweight.

Researchers were interested in studying the mortality rates of middle-aged and older adults after bariatric surgery. Data available prior to this study was based almost solely on young, white females who had had the weight-loss surgery. That group of individuals has a lower incidence of mortality related to obesity even before bariatric surgery than do older adults, according to study researchers.

The purpose of the study was to determine the effectiveness of weight-loss surgery in populations with an increased risk of death related to obesity; these populations were identified as being highest in men and minority populations.

The research team studied follow-up data for 850 men with a mean age of 49.5 years and a mean BMI of 47.4 for an average of 6.2 years. The men in the study had the weight-loss surgery between the years 2000 and 2006. Their mortality (death) rate was compared to a control group of 41,000 other men who did not have the surgery, reports Yahoo! News. All the men were patients at medical centers of Veterans Affairs.

Researchers concluded that bariatric surgery in morbidly obese middle-aged men did not decrease their risk of death compared with care that did not include the surgery. Still, this population may opt for weight-loss surgery based on factors other than mortality rate, such as the reduction of body weight, control of obesity-related health conditions and improved quality of life.

In the United States, weight-loss surgery usually involves one of four procedures, explains the Weight-Control Information Network. The four procedures, each with its own risks and benefits, are: adjustable gastric band (AGB); Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB); biliopancreatic diversion with a duodenal switch (BPD-DS); and vertical sleeve gastrectomy (VSG). The AGB works by decreasing food intake while the other surgeries involve not only the decreased ability to take in food but also affect food absorption and other factors.

Your physician will weigh conditions such as your health, obesity-related health conditions and your eating behaviors in helping to determine which, if any, of the weight-loss surgeries would be to your benefit. The outcome of this new study into mortality rates following bariatric surgery may be a factor in your consideration of the procedure now also.

Smack dab in the middle of the baby boomer generation, L.L. Woodard is a proud resident of "The Red Man" state. With what he hopes is an everyman's view of life's concerns both in his state and throughout the nation, Woodard presents facts and opinions based on common-sense solutions.

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Weight-Loss Surgery May Not Lower Death Risk: Study (HealthDay)

SUNDAY, June 12 (HealthDay News) -- Weight-loss surgery doesn't decrease the risk of death among severely obese middle-aged adults, a new study says.

U.S. researchers looked at 850 male patients at Veterans Affairs medical centers who had weight-loss (bariatric) surgery between January 2000 and December 2006. Their average age was 49.5 and their average body mass index was 47.4 (a body mass index, or BMI, over 40 is considered severely obese).

The death rate in this group of patients was compared to that of a control group of about 41,000 VA patients (average age 54.7, average BMI 42) who didn't have surgery.

Eleven of the 850 bariatric surgery patients (1.29 percent) died within one month after surgery. Unadjusted analysis of the death rates over a six-year period showed that the bariatric surgery patients had lower death rates than those in the control group, but further analysis showed that bariatric surgery was not significantly associated with reduced risk of death, said Matthew L. Maciejewski, of the Durham VA Medical Center in Durham, N.C., and colleagues.

The study, published online and in the June 15 print issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, was to be presented Sunday at an AcademyHealth research meeting in Seattle.

Even though bariatric surgery doesn't reduce the risk of death among middle-aged male patients, many of them still decide to undergo the procedure because there's strong evidence that it reduces body weight and obesity-related health problems, and improves quality of life, the researchers said.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases has more about bariatric surgery.

View the original article here

Weight-Loss Surgery May Not Lower Death Risk: Study (HealthDay)

SUNDAY, June 12 (HealthDay News) -- Weight-loss surgery doesn't decrease the risk of death among severely obese middle-aged adults, a new study says.

U.S. researchers looked at 850 male patients at Veterans Affairs medical centers who had weight-loss (bariatric) surgery between January 2000 and December 2006. Their average age was 49.5 and their average body mass index was 47.4 (a body mass index, or BMI, over 40 is considered severely obese).

The death rate in this group of patients was compared to that of a control group of about 41,000 VA patients (average age 54.7, average BMI 42) who didn't have surgery.

Eleven of the 850 bariatric surgery patients (1.29 percent) died within one month after surgery. Unadjusted analysis of the death rates over a six-year period showed that the bariatric surgery patients had lower death rates than those in the control group, but further analysis showed that bariatric surgery was not significantly associated with reduced risk of death, said Matthew L. Maciejewski, of the Durham VA Medical Center in Durham, N.C., and colleagues.

The study, published online and in the June 15 print issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, was to be presented Sunday at an AcademyHealth research meeting in Seattle.

Even though bariatric surgery doesn't reduce the risk of death among middle-aged male patients, many of them still decide to undergo the procedure because there's strong evidence that it reduces body weight and obesity-related health problems, and improves quality of life, the researchers said.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases has more about bariatric surgery.

View the original article here

Obesity Greater Risk for Fatty Liver Than Alcohol, Study Finds (HealthDay)

THURSDAY, June 2 (HealthDay News) -- Obesity and insulin resistance constitute a greater risk for fatty liver disease than moderate alcohol consumption, according to a new study that found drinking modest amounts of red wine posed no greater risk for developing the condition.

For their study, published online May 23 in Annals of Medicine, Swedish researchers instructed 44 people to either abstain from alcohol or drink one (women) or two (men) glasses of red wine a day for three months. At the beginning and end of the three months, the investigators collected blood samples and conducted MRIs to measure the fatty content of participants' livers.

"It turned out that the amount of fat in the liver was linked with obesity and insulin resistance and was almost not at all affected by the red wine. Specifically, after three months, none of the wine drinkers had developed fatty liver or elevated liver transaminases," Dr. Stergios Kechagias, a liver specialist at Linkoping University, said in a news release from the Swedish Research Council.

Moreover, the study found a 16 percent decrease in levels of harmful LDL cholesterol among those who drank the red wine. "There is a strong correlation between moderate intake of alcohol and decreased risk of cardiovascular disease, and our data provides a mechanism for this since LDL cholesterol was lowered to such a large extent," Dr. Fredrik Nystrom, a professor at Linkoping, concluded in the news release.

Because it's known that large amounts of alcohol contribute to liver disease, it was long thought that even moderate consumption might have a harmful effect.

Fatty liver, which is associated with diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, can lead to cirrhosis of the liver, the researchers noted.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases has more information on fatty liver disease.

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Study: For Obese Women, Quality of Life Suffers More (Time.com)

A lot of factors determine your health-related quality of life, including your weight. In general, the heavier you are - that is, the further you veer into overweight territory - the worse your quality of life. But a new survey finds that some groups, such as women, are more negatively affected than others.

For the survey, researchers asked 3,844 U.S. adults aged 35-89 a series of questionnaires designed to gauge the respondents' physical and mental quality of life. The questions included measures of mobility, pain, cognition, "vitality," anxiety and depression, among other factors.

(More on TIME.com: Obese Teens Are More Likely to Smoke, Have Riskier Sex)

Overall, the survey found, people with "normal" body mass index (ranging from 18.5 to 24.9) reported better health-related quality of life than overweight (BMI of 25 to 29.9) or obese (BMI of 30 to 50) respondents. But when researchers looked more closely at African American participants, they found that those in the overweight group reported higher quality of life scores than their normal-weight and obese peers.

Why that's so isn't clear, but the researchers say the findings are in line with past studies that have found a smaller association between increasing BMI and mortality among blacks than among non-blacks. "The mechanisms by which overweight and obesity affect daily living and mortality may also differ between races," the authors wrote. "Lifestyle, roles, bodily pain, or vitality may simply be less affected by overweight among blacks than they are among non-blacks."

(More on TIME.com: Overcoming Obesity)

The questionnaires also suggested that obese women were more likely to suffer lower quality of life than obese men, especially when it came to measures of mental health. The authors wrote:

[A]lthough there has been some emerging evidence that obesity may be negatively associated with mental health among women in non-U.S. settings, our analysis is the first to indicate that such an inverse relationship may be significant among American women, while confirming evidence that among men, the association appears significant only with physical health.

That may be due in part to the fact that obese women tend to suffer more stigma and bias than equally portly men. A study last year that examined salary differences among obese Americans found that obese women tended to earn less than their normal-weight counterparts, while obese men didn't suffer in pay for their size. (For both genders, however, the cost of obesity was high after factoring in increases in sick days and medical costs, premature death, higher grocery bills and even the cost of extra gasoline - the heavier your car load, the more gas you guzzle.)

(More on TIME.com: Want to Sharpen Your Mind? Drop a Few Pounds)

"Our study did not look at why extra weight seems to be less of a burden for blacks and more of a burden for women, but there are several possible explanations," said David Feeny of the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Ore., a co-author and investigator of the current study. "These are questions that should be addressed in future studies."

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Study Sees Link Between Psoriasis, Obesity in Kids (HealthDay)

FRIDAY, May 20 (HealthDay News) -- The prevalence of psoriasis -- a chronic, inflammatory disease of the skin -- is significantly higher among overweight and obese kids, researchers have found.

The Kaiser Permanente study, published online in the Journal of Pediatrics, also found that teens with psoriasis (regardless of their body weight) have higher cholesterol levels, putting them at greater risk for heart disease.

"This study suggests a link between obesity and psoriasis in children," the study's lead author Corinna Koebnick, research scientist at the Kaiser Permanente Southern California's Department of Research & Evaluation, said in a Kaiser Permanente news release.

"But our study findings also suggest that the higher heart disease risk for patients with psoriasis starts in childhood in the form of higher cholesterol levels. We may need to monitor youth with psoriasis more closely for cardiovascular risk factors, especially if they are obese," Koebnick added.

Using electronic health records to study 710,949 racially and ethnically diverse children, the investigators found obese children were almost 40 percent more likely to have psoriasis than normal weight children. At even greater risk, extremely obese children were nearly 80 percent more likely to have psoriasis than normal weight children. Moreover, it was four times more likely for psoriasis to be severe or more widespread in obese youth than in normal weight children.

The study also revealed that, compared with kids without psoriasis, teens with the skin condition had 4 to 16 percent higher cholesterol levels and liver enzymes, regardless of their weight.

Psoriasis, often viewed merely as a burdensome skin condition, may put children at risk for metabolic disease (such as diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and heart disease), as seen in adults, the study authors pointed out.

"It has been well described that adults with psoriasis have increased cardiovascular risk factors, but we have now examined these issues in children," the study's senior author, Dr. Jashin J. Wu, director of clinical research and the associate residency program, and director for the department of dermatology at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center, said in the news release.

"As we follow these patients over 30 to 40 years, we will be able to determine if these increased cardiovascular risk factors in turn increase the risk for major adverse cardiac events," said Wu.

The researchers acknowledged that the study had limitations due to its cross-sectional design, where both body weight and information on psoriasis were assessed at the same time, and stated that these issues would be addressed in future studies.

More information

The American Academy of Pediatrics provides details on childhood obesity.

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