Accumulation of fatty tissue in the neck predicts adiposity, heart problems
Feb 17 2021
Researchers from the University of Granada warn that an accumulation of fatty tissue in the neck (both the double chin and the deeper deposits, located between muscles and around the cervical vertebrae) is a predictor of central and overall adiposity, cardiometabolic risk, and a pro-inflammatory profile in sedentary young adults.
This simplified illustration demonstrates the researchers’ hypothesis about the morphological and cellular characteristics of the fat deposits in the neck, in a person of a normal weight who is relatively healthy vs. a person with obesity and associated comorbidities. This image is reproduced from the doctoral thesis published by Maria Jose Arias-Tellez on the Biomedicine programme of the University of Granada, entitled ‘Neck adipose tissue and neck circumference as predictors of cardiometabolic risk in sedentary adults’. Image Credit: University of Granada
New study reveals that daytime naps are partly regulated by genes
How often a person takes daytime naps, if at all, is partly regulated by their genes, according to new research led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and published in
Nature Communications.
In this study, the largest of its kind ever conducted, the MGH team collaborated with colleagues at the University of Murcia in Spain and several other institutions to identify dozens of gene regions that govern the tendency to take naps during the day. They also uncovered preliminary evidence linking napping habits to cardiometabolic health. Napping is somewhat controversial, says Hassan Saeed Dashti, PhD, RD, of the MGH Center for Genomic Medicine, co-lead author of the report with Iyas Daghlas, a medical student at Harvard Medical School (HMS). Dashti notes that some countries where daytime naps have long been part of the culture (such as Spain) now discourage the habit. Meanwhile, some companies in
Post-acute COVID-19 syndrome likely to substantially impact NHS in England
Researchers in the UK have warned that cardiometabolic and pulmonary events among coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) survivors following their discharge from hospital is likely to have an ongoing and substantial impact on the National Health Service (NHS) in England.
The team found that rates of these post-hospitalization events among more than 31,000 COVID-19 survivors were at least as high as among patients who had been discharged from hospital with pneumonia.
For the study, the team – from the University of Oxford, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and The Phoenix Partnership in Leeds – used information from a data analysis platform called OpenSAFELY.