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Air pollution linked to heightened risk of type 2 diabetes in obese Latino children

Scientists tracked children's health and respective levels of residential air pollution for about 3.5 years before associating chronic unhealthy air exposure to a breakdown in beta cells, special pancreatic cells that secrete insulin and maintain the appropriate sugar level in the bloodstream. By the time the children turned 18, their insulin-creating pancreatic cells were 13 percent less efficient than normal, making these individuals more prone to eventually developing Type 2 diabetes, researchers said. "Exposure to heightened air pollution during childhood increases the risk for Hispanic children to become obese and, independent of that, to also develop Type 2 diabetes," said Michael Goran, co-director of the Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and corresponding author of the study. "Poor air quality appears to be a catalyst for obesity and diabetes in children, but the conditions probably are forged via different pa...

Teachers may be cause of 'obesity penalty' on girls' grades

he study, published in the latest issue of the journal  Sociology of Education , indicates that the relationship between obesity and academic performance may result largely from educators interacting differently with girls of various sizes, rather than from obesity's effects on girls' physical health . Even when they scored the same on ability tests, obese white girls received worse high school grades than their normal-weight peers. Teachers rated them as less academically able as early as elementary school, according to the report's author, Amelia Branigan, UIC visiting assistant professor of sociology. Branigan analyzed elementary school students around age 9 in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, and high school students approximately 18 years old in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997 cohort. The elementary school students were evaluated by teacher-assessed academic performance, while grade point average was the measured outcome used to asse...

Giving the messages from fat cells a positive spin to prevent diabetes

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A analysis workforce led by Youngsters's Nationwide finds that losing a few pounds by surgical approaches seems to reset chemical messages that fats cells ship, considerably decreasing individuals's threat of creating kind 2 diabetes . Credit score: Youngsters's Nationwide Well being System Shedding weight seems to reset the chemical messages that fats cells ship to different components of the physique that in any other case would encourage the event of Kind 2 diabetes, considerably decreasing the danger of that illness, a workforce led by Youngsters's Nationwide Well being System researchers report in a brand new examine. The findings provide hope to the practically 2 billion adults who're obese or overweight worldwide that lots of the detrimental results of carrying an excessive amount of weight can recede, even on the molecular stage, as soon as they drop a few pounds. In 2015, Robert J. F...

New study reinforces the contribution of S6K1 kinase in obesity and aging

Previous studies by Drs. Thomas and Kozma had shown that S6K1 plays a critical role in fat tissue expansion by transcriptionally regulating the differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) into adipocytes (fat cells). As Dr. Thomas explained "In the meantime, Paul Fox contacted us proposing a possible connection between S6K1 and the glutamyl-prolyl-tRNA snythetase ( EPRS ), together we found that that S6K1 phosphorylation is required to release EPRS from its canonical role in protein synthesis to form the interferon γ inhibitor of translation ( GAIT ) complex, which blocks the translation of interferon regulated genes." "This change of function is key, since we also found that EPRS mediates the localization of the fatty acid transport protein 1 (FATP1) to the membrane, stimulating the uptake of long chain fatty acids," adds Dr. Kozma. "This confirmed a dual role of S6K1 in contributing to adiposity and aging. Indeed, mice with phospho-deficient EPRS pre...