Survey finds majority of Americans think bariatric surgery is a shortcut to losing pounds, should only be a last resort

Experts stress the need for surgery to improve obesity-related health issues and help patients improve their lives

Reports and Proceedings

ORLANDO HEALTH

 

VIDEO: 

A NEW SURVEY BY ORLANDO HEALTH REVEALS COMMON STIGMAS AROUND WEIGHT LOSS PROCEDURES THAT MAY DETER PATIENTS FROM PURSUING EFFECTIVE TREATMENT FOR OBESITY.

view more 

CREDIT: ORLANDO HEALTH

Orlando, Fla - More than two in five U.S. adults suffer from obesity, an epidemic that continues to trend upward. While bariatric surgery is an extremely effective treatment option, a new national survey by Orlando Health reveals common stigmas that may deter those who qualify for surgery from pursuing the treatment they need.

“Treatment plans for obesity are tailored to each individual patient based on things like body mass index and existing medical conditions and may include medication, lifestyle changes, counseling and bariatric surgery,” said Andre Teixeira, MD, medical director and bariatric surgeon at Orlando Health Weight Loss and Bariatric Surgery Institute. “By taking this personalized approach, we are extremely successful in reversing health issues caused by obesity, from diabetes to heart disease. But if someone’s decision is affected by those who think they don’t need surgery or that make them feel like a failure if they have surgery, that greatly diminishes their chances of losing weight and maintaining a healthy lifestyle long term.”

The survey, conducted by Ipsos, found 79% of Americans believe weight loss surgery should only be pursued as a last resort, and 60% agree that bariatric surgery is a shortcut to shedding pounds, something Dr. Teixeira says couldn’t be further from the truth.

“Bariatric surgery is by no means an easy way out. If you have the courage to ask for help and commit to doing the hard work of changing your diet and improving your life, you’re a champion in my book.” Dr. Teixeira said. “Surgery is simply a tool to jumpstart that change. After surgery, it is up to the patient to learn how to eat well, implement exercise into their routine and shift their mindset to maintain their health for the rest of their lives.”

Guidelines by the American Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS) and International Federation for the Surgery of Obesity and Metabolic Disorders (IFSO) were recently updated for the first time since 1991 to expand access to bariatric surgery, which is less invasive and safer than ever, thanks to advancements in laparoscopic and robotic surgery techniques. Yet only 1% of those who are clinically eligible undergo surgical treatment for obesity.

The survey also found that 61% of respondents believe exercise and diet should be enough.

“Because of the stigma around obesity and bariatric surgery, so many of my patients feel defeated if they can’t lose weight on their own,” said Muhammad Ghanem, MD, a bariatric surgeon at Orlando Health Weight Loss and Bariatric Surgery Institute. “But when I tell them obesity is a disease and that many of its causes are outside of their control, you can see their relief. They often even shed a tear because they’ve struggled with their weight all their lives and finally have some validation.”

That was the case for Maritza Cruz Rivera, 64, who lived with pain and fatigue for years and finally hit a breaking point during a routine visit to her primary care physician.

“When they weighed me before my appointment, I looked at the scale and started to cry. There it was: 227,” Cruz Rivera said. “Something triggered in me in that moment to finally do something about my weight and get some help.”

Upon learning that bariatric surgery was a good option for her, she spoke with friends and family. While many supported her decision to undergo surgery, she also heard a lot of misconceptions. She says it’s best to get the facts from your doctor and make a decision based on what is best for your health.

Following surgery, Cruz Rivera changed her relationship with food and began prepping healthy salads and soups that she enjoys. A year later, she is at a healthy weight and is living the life she’s always strived to live, riding her bicycle with her grandchildren, going for long walks in her neighborhood and even doing one of her favorite things: dancing.

“I haven’t been able to dance like this in 20 years. I didn’t go into this to look like Barbie, I just wanted to live a healthy life with my family, and now I can do that,” Cruz Rivera said. “For anyone struggling with obesity who feels depressed or stuck like I did, don't bury yourself in that dark hole. Understand and know that there's always a solution.”

B-ROLL, SOUND BITES, WEB ELEMENTS & HI-RES STILL PHOTOS - Including HD video available for free/unrestricted use by the news media: https://bit.ly/3N3mVsI

Courtesy: Orlando Health

For assistance in downloading, or if you have any questions, contact: ben@mediasourcetv.com or call:  419.345.5478.

 

About Orlando Health

Orlando Health, headquartered in Orlando, Florida, is a not-for-profit healthcare organization with $9.6 billion of assets under management that serves the southeastern United States and Puerto Rico.

Founded more than 100 years ago, the healthcare system is recognized around the world for Central Florida’s only pediatric and adult Level I Trauma program as well as the only state-accredited Level II Adult Trauma Center in Pinellas County. It is the home of the nation’s largest neonatal intensive care unit under one roof, the only system in the southeast to offer open fetal surgery to repair the most severe forms of spina bifida, the site of an Olympic athlete training facility and operator of one of the largest and highest performing clinically integrated networks in the region. Orlando Health has pioneered life-changing medical research and its Graduate Medical Education program hosts more than 350 residents and fellows.

The 3,429-bed system includes 29 hospitals and emergency departments – 25 of which are currently operational with four coming soon. The system also includes nine specialty institutes, skilled nursing facilities, an in-patient behavioral health facility under the management of Acadia Healthcare, and more than 375 outpatient facilities that include physician clinics, imaging and laboratory services, wound care centers, home healthcare services in partnership with LHC Group, and urgent care centers in partnership with FastMed Urgent Care. More than 4,750 physicians, representing more than 100 medical specialties and subspecialties have privileges across the Orlando Health system, which employs more than 27,000 team members and more than 1,500 physicians.

In FY 23, Orlando Health cared for 197,000 inpatients and 6.6 million outpatients.  The healthcare system provided nearly $1.3 billion in total impact to the communities it serves in the form of community benefit programs and services, Medicare shortfalls, bad debt, community-building activities and capital investments in FY 22, the most recent period for which this information is available.

Additional information can be found at http://www.orlandohealth.com, or follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @orlandohealth.

Survey method

This survey was conducted online within the United States by Ipsos on the KnowledgePanel® from November  9 to November 12, 2023, and surveyed 1,017  U.S. adults ages 18 and older.  This poll is based on a nationally representative probability sample and has margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level, for results based on the entire sample of adults. For complete survey methodology, including weighting variables and subgroup sample sizes, please contact: christopher.moessner@ipsos.com.

Maritza Cruz Rivera discusses progress with bariatric surgeon Andre Teixeira, MD, a year after undergoing bariatric surgery (IMAGE)

ORLANDO HEALTH

After years of living with constant pain and fatigue, bariatric surgery helped Maritza Cruz Rivera lose weight and implement healthy habits to help her maintain her health long term.

Maritza Cruz Rivera looks at photos of herself before she underwent bariatric surgery. (IMAGE)

ORLANDO HEALTH

A year after undergoing bariatric surgery, Maritza Cruz Rivera is able to be active with her family and live a healthier lifestyle.

CREDIT

Orlando Health

---

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

Some mosquitoes like it hot

Mosquito heat tolerance varies by population, according to a new study; findings could change estimates of vector-borne disease risk

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS

 

IMAGE: 

VIALS CONTAINING THE GLOBALLY INVASIVE TIGER MOSQUITO AEDES ALBOPICTUS.

view more 

CREDIT: LAWTON BLANCHARD

Certain populations of mosquitoes are more heat tolerant and better equipped to survive heat waves than others, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

This is bad news in a world where vector-borne diseases are an increasingly global health concern. Most models that scientists use to estimate vector-borne disease risk currently assume that mosquito heat tolerances do not vary. As a result, these models may underestimate mosquitoes’ ability to spread diseases in a warming world.

Researchers led by Katie M. Westby, a senior scientist at Tyson Research Center, Washington University’s environmental field station, conducted a new study that measured the critical thermal maximum (CTmax), an organism’s upper thermal tolerance limit, of eight populations of the globally invasive tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus. The tiger mosquito is a known vector for many viruses including West Nile, chikungunya and dengue.

“We found significant differences across populations for both adults and larvae, and these differences were more pronounced for adults,” Westby said. The new study is published Jan. 8 in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

Westby’s team sampled mosquitoes from eight different populations spanning four climate zones across the eastern United States, including mosquitoes from locations in New Orleans; St. Augustine, Fla.; Huntsville, Ala.; Stillwater, Okla.; St. Louis; Urbana, Ill.; College Park, Md.; and Allegheny County, Pa.

The scientists collected eggs in the wild and raised larvae from the different geographic locations to adult stages in the lab, tending the mosquito populations separately as they continued to breed and grow. The scientists then used adults and larvae from subsequent generations of these captive-raised mosquitoes in trials to determine CTmax values, ramping up air and water temperatures at a rate of 1 degree Celsius per minute using established research protocols.

The team then tested the relationship between climatic variables measured near each population source and the CTmax of adults and larvae. The scientists found significant differences among the mosquito populations.

The differences did not appear to follow a simple latitudinal or temperature-dependent pattern, but there were some important trends. Mosquito populations from locations with higher precipitation had higher CTmax values. Overall, the results reveal that mean and maximum seasonal temperatures, relative humidity and annual precipitation may all be important climatic factors in determining CTmax.

“Larvae had significantly higher thermal limits than adults, and this likely results from different selection pressures for terrestrial adults and aquatic larvae,” said Benjamin Orlinick, first author of the paper and a former undergraduate research fellow at Tyson Research Center. “It appears that adult Ae. albopictus are experiencing temperatures closer to their CTmax than larvae, possibly explaining why there are more differences among adult populations.”

“The overall trend is for increased heat tolerance with increasing precipitation,” Westby said. “It could be that wetter climates allow mosquitoes to endure hotter temperatures due to decreases in desiccation, as humidity and temperature are known to interact and influence mosquito survival.”

Little is known about how different vector populations, like those of this kind of mosquito, are adapted to their local climate, nor the potential for vectors to adapt to a rapidly changing climate. This study is one of the few to consider the upper limits of survivability in high temperatures — akin to heat waves — as opposed to the limits imposed by cold winters.

“Standing genetic variation in heat tolerance is necessary for organisms to adapt to higher temperatures,” Westby said. “That’s why it was important for us to experimentally determine if this mosquito exhibits variation before we can begin to test how, or if, it will adapt to a warmer world.”

Future research in the lab aims to determine the upper limits that mosquitoes will seek out hosts for blood meals in the field, where they spend the hottest parts of the day when temperatures get above those thresholds, and if they are already adapting to higher temperatures. “Determining this is key to understanding how climate change will impact disease transmission in the real world,” Westby said. “Mosquitoes in the wild experience fluctuating daily temperatures and humidity that we cannot fully replicate in the lab.”

---

JOURNAL

Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution

DOI

10.3389/fevo.2023.1248673 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

ARTICLE TITLE

Genetically based variation in heat tolerance covaries with climate in a globally important disease vector

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Jan-2024

 

Researchers engineer in vivo delivery system for prime editing, partially restoring vision in mice

By adapting virus-like particles to carry the machinery for a type of gene editing called prime editing, scientists have corrected disease-causing mutations in animals and increased editing efficiency.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BROAD INSTITUTE OF MIT AND HARVARD

Prime editing, a versatile form of gene editing that can correct most known disease-causing genetic mutations, now has a new vehicle to deliver its machinery into cells in living animals.

A team of researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has engineered virus-like particles to deliver prime editors to cells in mice at a high enough efficiency to rescue a genetic disorder. In the new work published today in Nature Biotechnology, the team adapted engineered virus-like particles (eVLPs) that they had previously designed to carry base editors — another type of precision gene editor that makes single-letter changes in DNA. 

Now the researchers describe how they re-engineered both eVLPs and parts of the prime editing protein and RNA machinery to boost editing efficiency up to 170 times in human cells compared to the previous eVLPs that deliver base editors. The team used their new system to correct disease-causing mutations in the eyes of two mouse models of genetic blindness, partially restoring their vision. They also delivered prime editors to the mouse brain, and did not detect any off-target editing.

“This study represents the first time to our knowledge that delivery of protein-RNA complexes has been used to achieve therapeutic prime editing in an animal,” said David Liu, senior author of the study and Richard Merkin Professor and director of the Merkin Institute of Transformative Technologies in Healthcare at the Broad. Liu is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and a professor at Harvard University.

Delivery dilemma

Gene editing approaches promise to treat a range of diseases by precisely correcting genetic mutations that cause disease. Prime editing, described in 2019 by Liu’s group, can make longer and more diverse types of DNA changes than other types of editing. However, delivering the complex gene editing machinery to cells in living animals has been challenging.

The prime editing system has three components: a Cas9 protein that can nick DNA; an engineered prime editing guide RNA (pegRNA) that specifies the location of the edit and also contains the new edited sequence to install at that location; and a reverse transcriptase that uses the pegRNA as a template to make specific changes to the DNA.

Researchers have used a variety of methods to deliver these molecular machines to cells, including lipid nanoparticles and viruses. Virus-like particles (VLPs), composed of a shell of viral proteins that carry cargo but lack any viral genetic material, have also been of particular interest. But VLPs have traditionally yielded modest delivery outcomes in animals, and have to be specifically engineered for each different type of cargo to efficiently deliver to cells.

“We initially hoped that we could just take the eVLPs that we had painstakingly developed and optimized for base editing and apply them to prime editors,” said Meirui An, a graduate student in the Liu lab and first author of the new paper. “But when we tried that, we observed almost no prime editing at all.”

Bottleneck breakthroughs

In the new work, the researchers extensively re-engineered both the eVLP proteins and the prime editing machinery itself so that both the delivery and editing systems worked more efficiently. For instance, they improved how the prime editing cargo was packaged in the eVLPs, how it was separated from the delivery vehicle, and how it was delivered into the target cells’ nuclei.

“The prime editor cargo must be efficiently packaged into eVLPs when the particles form but must also be efficiently released from the particles after target cell entry,” said Aditya Raguram, a former Liu lab graduate student and co-author of the study. “All of these steps have to be carefully orchestrated in order to achieve efficient eVLP-mediated prime editing.”

While each individual improvement led to small jumps in the efficiency of the prime editors, the changes together had a much larger impact.

“When we combined everything together, we saw improvements of roughly 100-fold compared to the eVLPs that we started with,” said Liu. “That kind of improvement in efficiency should be enough to give us therapeutically relevant levels of prime editing, but we didn’t know for sure until we tested it in animals.”

In vivo tests

Liu and his colleagues, in collaboration with Krzysztof Palczewski of the University of California, Irvine, first tested the system in mice to correct two different genetic mutations in the eyes. One mutation, in the gene Mfrp, causes a disease called retinitis pigmentosa that leads to progressive retinal degeneration. The other, in the gene Rpe65, is associated with blindness seen in the condition known as Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA) in humans.

In both instances, the eVLPs corrected the mutation in up to 20 percent of the animals’ retina cells, partially restoring their vision.

The research group also showed that the eVLPs loaded with prime editing machinery could effectively edit genes in the brains of living mice. Nearly half of all cells in the cortex of the brain that received the editing machinery showed a gene edit.

“The gene editing field largely agrees that, moving into the future, gene editing machinery should ultimately be delivered as proteins to minimize potential side effects and we’ve now shown an effective way to do that,” said Liu. “We plan to continue to actively work on improving eVLPs and adapting the technology to target other tissue types within the body.”

 

Funding:

Support for the study was provided in part by the National Institutes of Health, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Foundation Fighting Blindness, the UC Irvine School of Medicine Dean’s office, a Research to Prevent Blindness unrestricted grant, and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

Paper cited:

An, M. et al. Engineered virus-like particles for transient delivery of prime editor ribonucleoprotein complexes in vivo. Nature Biotechnology. Online January 8, 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s41587-023-02078-y 

 

About Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard was launched in 2004 to empower this generation of creative scientists to transform medicine. The Broad Institute seeks to describe the molecular components of life and their connections; discover the molecular basis of major human diseases; develop effective new approaches to diagnostics and therapeutics; and disseminate discoveries, tools, methods and data openly to the entire scientific community.

 

Founded by MIT, Harvard, Harvard-affiliated hospitals, and the visionary Los Angeles philanthropists Eli and Edythe L. Broad, the Broad Institute includes faculty, professional staff and students from throughout the MIT and Harvard biomedical research communities and beyond, with collaborations spanning over a hundred private and public institutions in more than 40 countries worldwide.

 

---

JOURNAL

Nature Biotechnology

DOI

10.1038/s41587-023-02078-y 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Engineered virus-like particles for transient delivery of prime editor ribonucleoprotein complexes in vivo

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Jan-2024

UK

Lancaster University leads NIHR study into improving community initiatives to empower residents

Peer-Reviewed Publication

LANCASTER UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

THE STUDY HAS INVESTIGATED THE HEALTH AND SOCIAL IMPACTS OF BIG LOCAL WITH THE AIM OF IMPROVING THE DEVELOPMENT OF FUTURE COMMUNITY INITIATIVES

view more 

CREDIT: STFC DARESBURY LABORATORY

Lancaster University has led on a major research project to help evaluate the impact of a large scale initiative in England – Big Local – that aimed to increase the control communities have over improvements in their neighbourhoods.

Funded by the National Lottery, Big Local began in 2010 with 150 areas where local residents were given £1 million over ten years to improve their own neighbourhood.

Residents had complete control over decisions about how the money was spent, with support from an independent organisation, Local Trust.

The £3M+ Communities in Control study from 2014 to 2021 is the longest evaluation of a community empowerment initiative ever conducted. The study has investigated the health and social impacts of Big Local with the aim of improving the development of future community initiatives.

As part of the study published in Public Health Research, researchers investigated how funding has acted as a facilitator for local action, as well as the challenges associated with community decision making. The study calculated that the original National Lottery grant of over £196M for the Big Local provided a return on investment of 30%.

They found “tentative evidence” that the mental health of populations in Big Local populations improved and burglaries were reduced.  There were also significant improvements in the mental health of residents actively involved in Big Local.

However, there was also evidence of negative impacts on health and wellbeing. Moreover, the benefits were also unequally distributed. Men were more likely than women to report improved mental wellbeing as were those with higher educational qualifications.

The third phase of the evaluation received over £700,000 from the NIHR Public Health Research Programme with earlier phases funded by the NIHR School for Public Health Research.

Led by Jennie Popay, Professor of Professor of Sociology and Public Health in the Division of Health Research, other Lancaster University researchers included Dr Emma Halliday, Dr Rebecca Mead, Dr Katharina Janke, Dr Michelle Collins, Dr Anne Townsend and Dr Joanna Reynolds and Professor Bruce Hollingsworth

Partner universities included Professor Margaret Whitehead from Liverpool, Professor Claire Bambra from Newcastle/Durham and Professor Matt Egan from Liverpool School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Professor Popay said: “Our findings on the positive and potential negative impacts on residents of place-based empowerment initiatives in relatively disadvantaged areas are particularly timely with growing calls in England for a new “community power paradigm” and the anticipated proposal of Government Levelling Up policies that may extend current policies, devolving more decision-making and resources down to local people.”

Matt Leach, chief executive of Local Trust, said: "Empowering residents to take the lead can drive substantial positive change. Future governments must prioritise communities at the heart of their policies if we are to address contemporary challenges effectively. 

“Communities across England are diverse and require tailored approaches. By offering appropriate resources, flexible long-term funding, and the means for local residents to form partnerships, these communities can effectively address and overcome these challenges. 

"This report demonstrates that just 10 years into what is a 15-year programme, National Lottery Community Fund investment in Big Local has delivered significant returns to local communities above and beyond the funds originally committed."

The study has implications for the design of future community empowerment initiatives, finding that:

• investment is needed to develop and sustain smaller scale community associations and organisations to emerge from and work with communities
• residents should take the lead in designing solutions but not necessarily be leaders in action
• local agencies should prioritise working as equal partners with communities rather than leaving communities to act alone.
• externally determined governance standards may undermine the development of communities’ capabilities for collective control

 

---

JOURNAL

Public Health Research

DOI

10.3310/GRMA6711 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Case study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Investigating health and social outcomes of the Big Local community empowerment initiative in England

Adolescent sports activities help improve bone health in older adults, new study finds

Researchers examine the association between sports played during adolescence and bone mineral density at old age

Peer-Reviewed Publication

JUNTENDO UNIVERSITY RESEARCH PROMOTION CENTER

 

IMAGE: 

RESEARCHERS FROM JUNTENDO UNIVERSITY IN JAPAN SHOW THAT OLDER ADULTS WHO HAD ENGAGED IN HIGH-IMPACT SPORTS DURING THEIR ADOLESCENT YEARS INCUR LONG-TERM BENEFITS IN TERMS OF BONE HEALTH AND ENHANCED BONE MINERAL DENSITY.

view more 

CREDIT: YOSHIFUMI TAMURA FROM JUNTENDO UNIVERSITY, JAPAN

Loss of bone mineral density (BMD) with age is an important cause of osteoporosis (deterioration of bone tissue), which has been reported as one of the leading causes of falls among older adults in Japan. This leads to fractures that require long-term nursing. Prevention of osteoporosis in the aging population can thus help decrease the burden of disease and healthcare costs substantially.

 

Early lifestyle habits can largely influence health and disease onset in old age. In this regard, physical activities pursued during adolescent years can go a long way in preserving long-term health. These effects can be largely attributed to the gain of bone mass, which peaks during the 20s, and subsequently begins to decline with age. Notably, studies have shown that a 10% increase in peak bone mass during adolescence can delay osteoporosis by up to 13 years. However, which types of adolescent sports activities played during junior high and high school years have a positive impact on BMD and bone health in older adults is not known.

 

To bridge this gap, a team of researchers from Juntendo University, Japan, recently examined the relationship between the type of sport played during adolescence, together with individual-specific features, and BMD in old age. The study, published in Volume 14 of Frontiers in Physiology on 12 October 2023, was conducted by Professor Yoshifumi Tamura from the Faculty of International Liberal Arts, along with Ms. Hikaru Otsuka and Dr. Hiroki Tabata from the Sportology Center, Dr. Ryuzo Kawamori from the Department of Metabolism & Endocrinology, and Dr. Hirotaka Watada from the Department of Metabolism & Endocrinology at the Graduate School of Medicine.

 

Giving further insights into their findings, Prof. Tamura explains: “BMD is difficult to increase once it decreases. Therefore, it is important to increase peak bone mass during adolescence to maintain BMD in old age. Our study sheds light on the importance of exercise in adolescence for the prevention of osteoporosis and provides scientific evidence for establishing early preventive measures against osteoporosis in the future.”

 

The study included 1,596 older adults aged between 65 and 84 years, from the Bunkyo Health Study, residing in Bunkyo-Ku, an urban area in Tokyo, Japan. The researchers evaluated their physical fitness, blood biomarker levels including vitamin D, and BMD of the femoral neck (upper region of the thigh bone) and lumbar spine (lower region of the spine) regions using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. Further, the subjects were interviewed to assess their participation in sports activities during their adolescence. Other parameters, including comorbidities, lifestyle habits, medical history, and current medication status, were also recorded for analysis.

 

The researchers noted that while femoral neck and lumbar spine BMD values were in the normal range for men, women had lower values for them, with a larger number taking osteoporosis medication. Conversely, diabetes, physical activity, current smoking, and alcohol intake were significantly higher in men. The most common adolescent sports activities included baseball/softball, basketball, judo, table tennis, tennis, volleyball, and swimming.

 

The study found that basketball was associated with significantly high femoral BMD in older men and women. Further, body weight and serum vitamin D levels were found to influence femoral BMD. On the contrary, women who participated in volleyball and swimming had a higher lumbar spine BMD. However, sports type was not associated with lumbar spine BMD in older men. Notably, body weight, serum vitamin D, and presence of diabetes, were found to influence lumbar spine BMD.

 

Overall, these findings suggest that older adults who engaged in high-impact sports activities in their adolescence experience enhanced BMD and bone health in their old age. Moreover, the researchers emphasize that BMD benefits are not only limited to athletes but also extend to those in the general population who had indulged in physical activities at junior high and high school.

 

An early sport activity, once pursued as a hobby, can very well lay the foundation for lifelong healthy bones. Considering the long-term impact on the health of older adults, high-impact sports activities which stimulate bone growth should thus be encouraged in junior and high schools.

 

“Physical exercise in adolescence affects BMD more than 50 years later in older adults. Our findings can guide the selection of sports played during adolescence for longer health benefits,” concludes Prof. Tamura.

 

 

Reference

 

Authors	Hikaru Otsuka1,2, Hiroki Tabata1*, Huicong Shi1,2, Mari Sugimoto2, Hideyoshi Kaga3, Yuki Someya4, Hitoshi Naito3, Naoaki Ito3, Abulaiti Abudurezake1, Futaba Umemura2, Tsubasa Tajima3, Saori Kakehi1, Yasuyo Yoshizawa5, Muneaki Ishijima1,2,6, Ryuzo Kawamori1,2,3, Hirotaka Watada1,3, and Yoshifumi Tamura1,2,3,5,7*
Title of original paper	Playing basketball and volleyball during adolescence is associated with higher bone mineral density in old age: the Bunkyo Health Study
Journal	Frontiers in Physiology
DOI	10.3389/fphys.2023.1227639
Affiliations	1Sportology Center, Graduate School of Medicine, Juntendo University 2Department of Sports Medicine and Sportology, Graduate School of Medicine, Juntendo University 3Department of Metabolism and Endocrinology, Graduate School of Medicine, Juntendo University 4Graduate School of Health and Sports Science, Juntendo University 5Department of Healthy Life Expectancy, Graduate School of Medicine, Juntendo University 6Department of Medicine for Orthopaedics and Motor Organ, Graduate School of Medicine, Juntendo University 7Faculty of International Liberal Arts, Juntendo University

 

 

 

About Professor Yoshifumi Tamura

Yoshifumi Tamura, MD, PhD, is currently a Professor at the Faculty of International Liberal Arts at Juntendo University, Japan. He received an MD and PhD from Juntendo University in 1997 and 2005, respectively. He served as a Counselor at the Japan Sports Agency from 2016 to 2018. His research interests include insulin resistance, clinical diabetology, exercise therapy, obesity, and sarcopenia among others. He has over 200 publications to his name in these research areas, which have been cited more than 4,000 times.

 

 

Additional information for EurekAlert
Latest Article Publication Date:	12 October 2023
Method of Research:	Observational study
Subject of Research:	People
Conflicts of Interest Statement:	The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest

 

---

DOI

10.3389/fphys.2023.1227639 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Frontiers in Physiology