The link between obesity and osteoarthritis may be more than just the wear and tear on the skeleton caused by added weight. A Duke University study has found that the absence of the appetite hormone leptin can determine whether obese mice experience arthritis, no matter how heavy they are. “We were completely surprised to find that mice that became extremely obese had no arthritis if their bodies didn’t have leptin,” said Farshid Guilak, Ph.D.

According to a recent study of clinical characteristics of teens who underwent laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery from 2002 until 2007, doctors may have a much narrower window of opportunity to reverse morbid obesity in teens than previously thought. The study, conducted at Cincinnati children’s Hospital Medical Center, appears in the current online edition of the Journal of Pediatrics.

researchers studying a large sample of adolescent American boys have found an association between metabolic syndrome, which is a complication of obesity, and elevated liver enzymes that mark potentially serious liver disease. The link between metabolic syndrome and the suspected liver disease did not appear in adolescent girls, said study leader Rose C. Graham, M.D., a pediatric gastroenterologist at The children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

researchers from the US and the UK who analysed health data on over 17,000 women from mid-life to old age found that being overweight or obese in middle age was linked to a significantly lower chance of enjoying good health in old age, with obese middle aged women having a 79 per cent lower chance.

This question was submitted through email from a young lady named Cassandra. What advice can you give her?

“I have been asked to lose some weight for ballet.

I weigh 130 pounds right now at 5′4″, and have been on a calorie count diet for the past three years. When I first went on the diet, I didn’t even excercise and I lost 20 pounds eating 1500 calories a day. I got down to 110 pounds.

Slowly, I gained back all the weight, and slowly I decreased my calorie amount, even though to maintain my weight, I should be able to eat a lot more. Now, I’m only eating 900 calories without exercise, and 1300 calories with a full day of dance and a mile run per day.

Why can’t I lose weight?”

Figures from a recent survey by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) show that only one in eight children, aged eight to thirteen, get enough exercise. The government recommends kids are active for sixty minutes each day.

experts have suggested that if current trends continue, two-thirds of British kids will be overweight or obese by 2050. Shockingly, the survey of 1,000 children found that a third of them were active for less than an hour a week.

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Lowers blood pressure, encourages exercise, improves psychological health – these may sound like the effects of a miracle drug, but they are actually among the benefits of owning a four-legged, furry pet.

In 2005 the World health Organization (WHO) estimated that globally 400 million adults were obese, defined by a body mass index (BMI) of 30 kg/m2 or greater. WHO projects that by 2015 there will be more than 700 million obese adults worldwide. obesity is considered to be one of the greatest risk factors for osteoarthritis, a progressive musculoskeletal disorder that is characterized by loss of joint cartilage.

New research published on bmj.com today reports that the more weight women gain from the age of 18 until middle age, the less likely they are to enjoy a long and healthy life. Findings indicated that compared with lean women, being obese in middle age reduces those odds by 79 percent. The authors note that this emphasizes the importance of maintaining a healthy weight from early adulthood.

Do some people have special “susceptibility” genes that make them vulnerable to obesity and diabetes, triggered by poor diet and less exercise? Stephen McGarvey, professor of community health and anthropology at Brown University, will attempt to answer that question as part of a new a five-year, $5.2-million National Institutes of health grant to conduct detailed genotyping of thousands of adults in the independent nation of Samoa.