Studies and Analyses

University of Central Florida study seeks to determine whether women who follow weight-loss and exercise programs at home fare as well as those who go to a center to work out and meet with counselors

Joy Ungerer has improved her health and lost excess weight by walking on a treadmill at an exercise center. Janet Brewer walks, too – either at a mall or in her neighborhood – and has watched the readings on her bathroom scale drop as well.

The two women are among the first p

Study shows larger babies have higher risk of certain cancers in adulthood

Babies who weighed more at birth had higher rates of digestive and lymphatic cancers in adulthood, according to a new study published February 7, 2005 in the online edition of the International Journal of Cancer, the official journal of the International Union Against Cancer (UICC). The study, available online at Wiley InterScience, also found that women who weighed more at birth had significantly h

Twice as many boys as girls are referred to medical specialists for evaluation of short stature or poor growth, according to a new study.

The imbalance may reflect society’s gender biases about stature, and may have serious health consequences: girls whose growth failure is caused by an underlying disease may be overlooked, or experience unnecessary delays in receiving a proper diagnosis. The results may also suggest that short but healthy boys are more likely to be subjected

Obese children who get kidney transplants tend to be younger, shorter and on dialysis longer than their leaner peers, according to a study in the February issue of the journal Pediatrics.

A review of 6,658 children age 2-17 receiving transplants in the United States, Mexico and Canada between 1987 and 2002 showed that obese children age 6-12 had a five-year mortality rate more than double that of non-obese children the same age: 12.1 percent compared to 5.4 percent respectivel

A new MORI survey published today is the first to take a wide-ranging look at the issues of reliability of information found on the Internet, and the extent to which users feel they can trust the information they find there.

The reputation of an organisation and the trustworthiness of the content of websites are important factors in people’s attitudes, the survey found. Information provided via the websites of more established organisations such as museums, libraries and archive

A pro-inflammatory protein activated by bacteria in the colon plays a key role in the development of experimental colitis in mice – a mouse-version of human Crohn’s disease – according to research by scientists at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine.

The study, published in the February 4, 2005 issue of the journal Science, identified interleukin-1Beta (IL-1â) as a major cause of severe inflammation in the mouse model of Crohn’s disease, which is a pai