It’s well known that being fat can be a fast track to diabetes and heart disease.

But now Sydney doctors say some obese folk are less at risk from the two potentially deadly illnesses than others – and they’ve launched a new study to find out why.

Experts at the Garvan Institute, the medical research facility at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital, say there are “healthy obese people” whose insulin works just as well as in someone who is lean.

These same people also appear to be less at risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. [Read more...]

We’ve heard obesity can be “spread” between friends when we copy each other’s eating habits, but a new study in mice suggests obesity could actually be infectious.

That’s right, infectious. As in, something you can catch.

In the study, mice engineered to have a particular immune deficiency developed fatty liver disease and got fatter when fed a Western-style diet. But strikingly, when these immune-deficient mice were put in the same cage as healthy mice, the healthy mice started to come down with symptoms of liver disease, and also got fatter. [Read more...]

High blood pressure (hypertension) is a principal risk factor for heart disease and affects 1 billion people. At least half of them are estimated to be salt-sensitive; their blood pressure rises with sodium intake. New research released today shows important aspects of how sodium and potassium are regulated in the kidney.

The work, posted online by Nature, also offers insight on how one form of familial high blood pressure disease is inherited. Nephrology researchers in the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio are co-authors.

Disease includes high potassium levels, low pH

The study explores the mechanisms of a rare, inherited kidney disease called pseudohypoaldosteronism type II (PHAII). This disease is marked by hypertension, higher-than-normal levels of potassium, and low pH, acidic body fluids. [Read more...]