One in four preschool-age children in the U.S. have overweight or obesity, putting them at risk for multiple chronic health problems including cancer. Early and consistent exposure to such food cues may promote conditioned eating, where the cue itself becomes a signal to eat. Children may then learn to eat by exposure to external cues rather than listing to their internal, biological signals of hunger.

When it comes to wildlife conservation efforts, urban environments could be far more helpful than we think, according to new research. A study published today in Ecology shows that animals move faster through ‘low quality’ habitats — evidence that could change the way conservationists think about managing landscapes to help species move in response to climate change. In light of the recent UN report indicating that 1 million species are threatened with extinction, the study provides a framework for definitive action to help preserve many species at risk. The work was carried out by researchers at Tufts University, University of Liverpool, Washington State University and the University of Ottawa.

Carl Korfmacher was nine years old when his father, Ron, returned from the Mayo Clinic for a check-up in the early 1970s.

Though he was lean and seemed fit, his father had been experiencing chest pains and coughing. His cholesterol was high. Plus, he was a heavy smoker. As he arrived home that day, July Fourth, his 37th birthday, Ron Korfmacher assured his family everything was going to be fine.

Elevated cholesterol levels

The next day, at his belated birthday celebration, amid the sound of firecrackers, he fell over at a picnic table. He struggled to breathe. Then, he died of a heart attack.

The man young Carl so looked up to was gone. He was buried a few days later, on Carl’s 10th birthday.

“He was a very wonderful and unique individual,” Carl recalled. “They couldn’t believe that a man that young could have heart disease.”

A few months later, Carl’s mother, Louise, had her children’s cholesterol checked. It was a wise decision. He and his brothers had elevated cholesterol levels, like their father.

Cholesterol is a waxy substance in the blood that can build up in arteries and lead to atherosclerosis, or narrowing of the arteries, which can eventually result in a heart attack or stroke. Other factors, such as high blood pressure, diabetes and smoking, compound the risk.

Cholesterol-lowering medicine wasn’t readily available then, so Louise made sure the family adhered to a healthy diet aimed at combatting high cholesterol.

Family history and other conditions

“She was pretty adamant and very careful,” Carl said. They ate very little red meat, used egg substitutes and drank dehydrated skim milk because that’s what was available. “We hated that!”

But he would come to cherish his mother’s insistence on safeguarding their health.

About 20 years ago, Carl began taking statin drugs, a type of cholesterol-lowering medication that can help reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke. At the time, his overall cholesterol was around 270 to 280 mg/dL (milligrams per decilitre) and his ratios of HDL, or “good” cholesterol, and LDL, or “bad cholesterol,” weren’t in a desirable range.

A variety of studies have suggested the optimal level of LDL in adults is less than 100 mg/dL. Recent research has found that those with LDL of 160 or higher, even with no history of heart disease or diabetes, had a 70% to 90% higher risk of dying from cardiovascular disease compared with those who had LDL below 100.

New cholesterol guidelines published in the journal Circulation advised health care providers to look at family history and other health conditions in assessing a patient’s heart disease risk.

“Family history of high cholesterol suggests there may be a genetic cholesterol disorder,” said Dr Sarah de Ferranti, chief of outpatient cardiology and director of preventive cardiology at Boston Children’s Hospital. Cholesterol screening can identify the one in 250 people who have a genetic cholesterol disorder, she said.

Familial hypercholesterolaemia

If there’s a family history of early heart disease or high cholesterol, children can reasonably be screened as young as age two, with a repeat screening every three to five years, said de Ferranti, a member of the committee that wrote the cholesterol guidelines issued by the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association. If a child has other cardiovascular risk factors, such as hypertension, obesity or diabetes, that can potentially prompt a cholesterol check, she said.

For otherwise healthy children without a concerning family history, it may be reasonable to do routine screening between ages nine and 11 and again between 17 and 21.

At the urging of his mother, Carl’s two sons underwent cholesterol screening during routine physicals when they were younger. They, too, had elevated cholesterol levels.

Doctors diagnosed Carl and his boys with familial hypercholesterolaemia, an inherited condition of high cholesterol associated with a significant increased risk of early heart attack.

Today, Carl, 55, and his sons Henry, 18, and Owin, 14, keep their cholesterol under control through statins, a healthy diet and exercise. His wife, Krista, stays active, too, encouraging physical activity as a family way of life.

“I think we’re a good example for our boys,” said Carl, who lives with his family in Evansville, Wisconsin. “As parents, we try to instil it as a culture: We are not obese people. We work out. We are exercisers. That’s who we are.”

Carl and Krista encourage their sons to think about how to make good health decisions on their own. Their message for others, Carl said, is: “Stay on top of it. No news is not good news – get checked and tested. Learn about a healthy lifestyle and live it. It won’t only benefit your heart, but the rest of your life in so many ways.”

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You would have to be living in a cave to have missed the CBD (cannabidiol) craze that is sweeping across America: New products are cramming store shelves as the market explodes for what many Americans believe to be a miracle cure-all.

Everything from oils to gummies to pills, creams and ointments are now for sale at supermarkets and specialty chains. You can even get massages infused with CBD, or cosmetics laced with the drug.

A ‘flood’ of products

All of these products contain cannabidiol but not THC, the ingredient in pot that provides a “high”. But what do scientists really know about the health benefits and risks of CBD?

Precious little, experts say, and consumers should take care that they aren’t wasting their money.

“You have a flood of CBD products that are coming from hemp that are going out onto the market, and you’ve got all sorts of claims being made about those from people are trying to sell them,” said Timothy Welty, chair of the department of clinical sciences at Drake University’s College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, in Des Moines, Iowa.

The flood of CBD products has become so overwhelming that the US Food and Drug Administration recently stepped into the fray.

The agency has whipped out a flurry of warning letters to companies marketing CBD products, telling them to stop making unfounded health claims for the substance.

Companies have falsely claimed that CBD can stop cancer cells, slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, ease nerve pain and fibromyalgia, and curb withdrawal symptoms for people undergoing substance abuse treatment, the FDA letters state.

What started the craze?

The agency will hold a public hearing regarding CBD products and their safety, and it has formed a working group to consider new laws and regulations to govern this Wild West market.

CBD products have swamped the market not because of any new medical evidence, but because of a change in federal law, Welty noted.

Late last year, Congress passed a farm bill that lifted a decades-old ban on growing hemp. As long as the plant contains less than 0.3% THC, hemp can be grown legally anywhere in the United States by licensed farmers.

The bill specifically said the US Drug Enforcement Agency cannot regulate hemp products like CBD, Welty said. So, it’s now up to the FDA to regulate the CBD craze.

The body contains a system of receptors that respond to the compounds in marijuana, including both THC and CBD, noted Dr David Copenhaver, director of cancer pain management and supportive care for the University of California, Davis Health Center.

Because of this, researchers have been highly interested in the potential benefits of CBD regarding a number of different health problems.

Potential to treat anxiety disorder

To date, there’s only one use for CBD that has significant scientific evidence behind it – curbing the symptoms of rare forms of epilepsy.

The FDA last year approved the drug Epidiolex to treat two forms of childhood epilepsy. The medical evidence has shown that the highly purified CBD in Epidiolex can ease seizures.

For the rest of CBD’s potential uses, there is simply too little evidence to make a firm conclusion.

The next potential medical use for CBD could be for the symptoms of anxiety disorder, said Welty and Yasmin Hurd, chair of translational neuroscience and director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai.

Clinical trials suggest that CBD could help treat anxiety, but Welty feels there needs to be more study. Hurd is slightly more convinced, but agrees more study is needed.

Other uses

“There is published evidence that CBD does decrease anxiety,” Hurd said. “That’s another indication where I can say I can believe the data; however, we still don’t know the dosing regimen that would be effective for anxiety. Those are studies that are ongoing.”

Other uses – as an anti-inflammatory, an aid for substance withdrawal, a sleep aid, a pain reliever – haven’t been conclusively proven.

In some cases, the evidence runs counter to what people might suspect.

There’s not much reason to believe CBD would be an effective means of pain relief, said Dr Ajay Wasan, vice chair for pain medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

“If you think of it as a medicine, it would be a weak analgesic,” Wasan said. “It’s really the THC component of medical marijuana which is the compound that gives you pain relief.”

Possibility of harm

CBD might actually make the eye disease glaucoma worse, according to a study published last December in the journal Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science.

Researchers found that CBD eye drops increased ocular pressure in mice, even as THC appeared to reduce pressure – which might explain why medical marijuana has had mixed results when it comes to studies on glaucoma treatment.

“I’ve been surprised how much CBD has taken off and exploded with very little data,” Wasan said. “Most of the other herbal supplements, there are at least some studies on it before it becomes really popular. But for this, I haven’t seen anything.”

The bottom line, researchers said, is that people who want to try CBD for one reason or another should talk with their doctor first. Welty noted that Epidiolex can be put to “off-label” use for other conditions if a doctor feels it might work.

Besides that, consumers might consider buying CBD products from a state-run programme. Some states like Iowa have established such programmes to make CBD available medicinally, Welty said.

“Those products are more reliable, because they have a system to monitor the purity of content,” Welty said. “You’re a little more sure that you’re getting what you’re paying for.”

Many unregulated products

Welty is much less sure of the “artisanal products” containing CBD that are available in stores and dispensaries, and for good reason – studies have shown that most of these products fail tests for content and purity.

A 2017 study concluded that nearly seven of 10 CBD products didn’t contain the amount of cannabidiol promised on the label, according to findings published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Nearly 43% of the products contained too little CBD, while about 26% contained too much. Worse, about one in five CBD products contained the intoxicating pot chemical THC.

“The CBD products that come through that route, there’s essentially no control, and you as a consumer have no way to know what you’re getting,” Welty said.

Copenhaver believes other legitimate uses for CBD could be found, but it will require a more extensive knowledge of the way the human body responds to marijuana’s different compounds.

People might do best to wait until the dust settles regarding the medical evidence, rather than being caught up in the CBD craze, Hurd said.

“It’s like we do this every 30 years or so,” Hurd said. “We romanticise something, that this is going to be the cure-all for every disorder. We’ve never found that.”

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Cuddler the bear, Aibo the dog, Justocat the purring kitty: They may only be furry, lifelike robots, but they have a made a real impact in nursing homes.

That’s the finding of new British research that suggests these high-tech “robopets” are the next best thing for nursing home residents unable to have a beloved pet or those suffering from loneliness.

Fond memories

“Although not every … resident may choose to interact with robopets, for those who do, they appear to offer many benefits,” study author Rebecca Abbott, of the University of Exeter Medical School, said in a university news release.

The robopets stimulate conversations and trigger fond memories of pets or past experiences, Abbott said. “And there is also the comfort of touching or interacting with the robopet itself. The joy of having something to care for was a strong finding across many of the studies.”

One US geriatrician who was not involved in the study said engagement with a robotpet does seem helpful.

“Most importantly, it was found to decrease loneliness and increase pleasure and joy, and bring comfort,” said Dr Maria Torroella Carney. She directs geriatrics and palliative medicine at Northwell Health in Great Neck, New York.

In the new study, Abbott’s group analysed data from 19 studies involving 900 nursing home residents, family members and staff at centres worldwide. Five different robopets were used in the studies: Necoro and Justocat (cats); Aibo (a dog); Cuddler (a bear); and Paro (a baby seal).

Many nursing home residents were entertained by the robopet even if they realised it wasn’t a real dog or cat. Of course, “residents’ responses could vary according to whether they were living with dementia and according to the severity of the dementia,” Abbott’s team noted.

Feeling loved

Some residents talked to the robopet as if it were, in fact, alive and a real animal. Some even made an emotional connection with the “pet”. For example, one resident told staff, “I woke up today and thought, today is going to be a good day because I get to see my friend.”

For others, just holding and stroking the robopet brought “them back into a space in their life where they feel loved”, as one nursing home caretaker put it in the study.

As to whether the robopet felt “real”, one resident’s family member said that it “doesn’t matter, because I can see that the robotic cat has an impact on my dad’s quality of life”.

Besides their other benefits, robopets appeared to boost social interaction with other residents, family members and staff, often by acting as a trigger for conversation, according to the research.

Of course, not every nursing home resident was enthused about the robopet. Some ignored them or even reacted negatively, and others were put off by their artificiality.

That means that specific staff training about the best use of the devices should help residents get the most out of the technology, Abbott and colleagues suggested.

For example, knowing if a person likes animals or once had pets is likely to affect how much they engage with a robopet, the team said.

The bottom line is that “it is not always possible to have a cat or a dog come into a care home, so robopets can offer a good alternative”, study co-author Noreen Orr concluded.

Questions remain

“Of course, robopets are no substitute for human interaction,” she said, “but our research shows that for those who choose to engage with them, they can have a range of benefits.”

For her part, Carney said questions remain around the benefits of the technology.

For example, while the emotional benefits for some residents seem clear, “We don’t know if this [technology] decreases medication use or any other health outcomes,” she said. Also, more study is needed into “which population of patients have best engagement and benefit”, Carney said.

And there’s one other drawback, for now: Robopets can be prohibitively expensive. However, “a new wave of more affordable robopets may make them more accessible to care homes,” Orr believes.

The study, which received no private industry funding, was published in the International Journal of Older People Nursing.

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A watchdog finds £188m incorrect penalties by the NHS in England for dental treatment and prescriptions.

Researchers have built a more efficient, more reliable potassium-oxygen battery, a step toward a potential solution for energy storage on the nation’s power grid and longer-lasting batteries in cell phones and laptops.

Most human cells have 23 pairs of chromosomes. Any deviation from this number can be fatal for cells, and several genetic disorders, such as Down syndrome, are caused by abnormal numbers of chromosomes.

Yale researchers have pinpointed a key reason why people are more likely to get sick and even die from flu during winter months: low humidity.

Expectant mothers and doctors have focused a lot on how much a woman gains during pregnancy, but new research suggests how much a woman weighs before getting pregnant may be far more important.

The study found that the more a woman weighed at the start of her pregnancy, the more likely she was to experience complications such as high blood pressure, preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, Caesarean delivery and preterm birth.

Improving pregnancy outcomes

“Pregnancy complications in mothers and their infants occurred in 34% of women with a normal weight and in over 60% of women with severe obesity at the start of their pregnancy,” said senior author Dr Romy Gaillard. She’s an assistant professor of paediatrics at Erasmus MC University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

“Rather than focusing on maternal weight gain during pregnancy, strategies are needed to optimise maternal weight before the start of pregnancy to improve pregnancy outcomes,” she said.

That doesn’t mean expectant moms should feel free to “eat for two” throughout pregnancy, however. Weight gain during pregnancy still matters, according to Dr Navid Mootabar, chairman of obstetrics and gynaecology at Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco, New York.

“The take-home is that if you want a healthy pregnancy, it’s not as much about maintaining the proper weight gain during pregnancy as it is about going into pregnancy with a proper pre-pregnancy weight,” said Mootabar, who reviewed the study’s findings.

Obesity rates have been rising in the United States and other parts of the world. Gaillard said obesity among women of reproductive age is a major problem.

To see what affect weight before and during pregnancy had on pregnancy outcomes, researchers reviewed 25 studies involving almost 200 000 women. Data was collected between 1989 and 2015.

Adverse events

The average age of the women was 30, and they came from Europe and North America.

Researchers categorised the women by weight status using body mass index (BMI). BMI is a rough estimate of how much fat someone has based on height and weight. For example, a 5-foot-5-inch (1.65m) woman who weighs 148 pounds (67kg) has a BMI of 24.6, which is considered normal weight.

About 4% of the women were underweight (BMI under 18.5); 68% were of normal weight (BMI 18.5-24.9); 20% were overweight (BMI 25-29.9); and about 8% were obese (BMI 30 and over).

In the obese category, 6% were considered grade one (BMI 30-34.9); almost 2% were grade two (BMI 35.0-39.9), and 0.5% were grade three (BMI 40 and over).

Just over 37% of pregnancies had an adverse event. Underweight women experienced an adverse event about 35% of the time compared to 61% for women who were obesity grade three.

Gaillard said weight-gain guidelines can be used to counsel women, but aren’t useful for predicting an individual woman’s risk of pregnancy complications.

Pregnancy ‘a marathon’

Dr Jill Rabin is co-chief of the division of ambulatory care, Women’s Health Programs-PCAP Services at Northwell Health in New Hyde Park, New York, and reviewed the study. She noted researchers cited several limitations in the data for weight gain during pregnancy, including self-reported pregnancy weights.

Rabin said the value of the study lies in the focus on pre-pregnancy weight.

“Pregnancy isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. What’s important, really, is how are you going into pregnancy? And, it’s not just weight, we need to optimise other metabolic and nutrition factors before conception,” Rabin said.

As far as weight gained during pregnancy, Rabin said that varies by individual. “There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. It really depends on how the baby is growing and how mom is utilising her nutritional input, because everyone utilises calories differently,” she explained.

The biggest problem, Rabin said, is that many women don’t see a doctor for pre-conception planning.

Mootabar agreed that women “need to get in touch with their providers before getting pregnant to discuss their risk factors. What happens now is a lot of women don’t show up to their doctors until after they’re already pregnant.”

The study was published in Journal of the American Medical Association.

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