26, April 2014

Blood test may predict child obesity risk

London: Scientists have found that a simple blood test, which reads DNA, can be used to predict whether a child will become obese.

Researchers at the Universities of Southampton, Exeter and Plymouth used the test to assess the levels of epigenetic switches in the PGC1a gene - a gene that regulates fat storage in the body.

Epigenetic switches take place through a chemical change called DNA methylation, which controls how genes work and is set during early life.

The Southampton team found that the test, when carried out on children at five years old, differentiates between children with a high body fat and those with a low body fat when they were older.

Results showed that a rise in DNA methylation levels of 10 per cent at five years was associated with up to 12 per cent more body fat at 14 years. Results were independent of the child's gender, their amount of physical activity and their timing of puberty.

Dr Graham Burdge, of the University of Southampton who led the study with colleague Dr Karen Lillycrop, said, "It can be difficult to predict when children are very young, which children will put on weight or become obese." "It is important to know which children are at risk because help, such as suggestions about their diet, can be offered early and before they start to gain weight," Burdge said.

"The results of our study provide further evidence that being overweight or obese in childhood is not just due to lifestyle, but may also involve important basic processes that control our genes.

"We hope that this knowledge will help us to develop and test new ways to prevent children developing obesity which can be introduced before a child starts to gain excess weight. However, our findings now need to be tested in larger groups of children," Burdge said.

The study, which also involved Professor Terence Wilkin at the University of Exeter and Dr Joanne Hosking at the University of Plymouth, is published in the journal Diabetes.

The researchers used DNA samples from 40 children who took part in the EarlyBird project, which studied 300 children in Plymouth from the age of five until they were 14 years old.

Led by Wilkin, the study assessed the children in Plymouth each year for factors related to type 2 diabetes, such as the amount of exercise they undertook and the amount of fat in their body. A blood sample was collected and stored.

The Southampton team extracted DNA from these blood samples to test for epigenetic switches.

Source: www.zeenews.india.com/health

26.04.2014

New tool calculates your heart's true age

London: Scientists have developed a new tool that can calculate the true age of your heart to estimate your risk of developing cardiovascular disease later in life.

The risk calculator uses current familial and lifestyle risk factors to estimate the true age of a person's heart.

 It then predicts how many more years an individual can expect to live before they have a heart attack/stroke compared with someone without these particular factors - if no corrective action is taken.

According to new recommendations by researchers from several British medical societies, published in the BMJ journal Heart, the JBS3 risk calculator can help healthcare professionals and patients better understand cumulative lifetime risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), and what can be done to lower it.

The calculator takes into account people's current lifestyle, blood pressure, cholesterol level and medical conditions that may affect the heart.

For example, a 35 year old woman smoker, with a systolic blood pressure of 160 mm Hg and a total cholesterol of 7 mmol/l, plus a family history of premature CVD, would have a true heart age of 47 and expect to survive to the age of 71 without having a heart attack/stroke. Her 10 year risk would be less than 2 per cent.

However, if this woman quit smoking, cut her total cholesterol to 4 mmol/l and her systolic blood pressure to 130 mm Hg, her heart age would fall to 30.

She could expect to live to the age of 85 before having a heart attack/stroke and more than halve her 10 year risk to less than 0.25 per cent.

For the majority of people, the JBS3 risk calculator can show the potential gains from an early and sustained change to a healthier lifestyle rather than prescription of drugs, the researchers said.

Lifestyle changes include quitting smoking, adopting a healthy diet, and boosting the amount of regular exercise while curbing sedentary activity.

Source: www.zeenews.india.com/health

26.04.2014

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