Informa Healthcare, one of the world’s premier medical scientific publishers, is introducingHandbook of Obesity: Clinical Applications, Third Edition,an in-depth examination of all the clinical aspects relating to obesity and its treatment.

Leading scientists today called for Europe to invest more funds into the study of lipids – the 'fatty' molecules that play a crucial role in the function of human cells and which are implicated in a range of diseases from obesity and diabetes to Alzheimer's.

Leading scientists today called for Europe to invest more funds into the study of lipids – the 'fatty' molecules that play a crucial role in the function of human cells and which are implicated in a range of diseases from obesity and diabetes to Alzheimer's.

Once heralded as a promising obesity treatment, the hormone leptin lost its fat-fighting luster when scientists discovered overweight patients were resistant to its effects. But pairing leptin with just a minor amount of exercise seems to revive the hormone’s ability to fight fat again, University of Florida researchers recently discovered.

New research by the Gladstone Institutes of Cardiovascular Disease (GICD) and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), has revealed the genetic determinants of fat storage in cells, which may lead to a new understanding of and potential treatments for obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

A review of research examining the effectiveness of different obesity treatments has concluded that no matter what other forms of therapy are offered, changes in lifestyle are imperative if patients want to maximise and maintain their weight loss.

Researchers have developed a new, lean mouse with characteristics suggesting that someday, using medication to manipulate a specific protein in humans could emerge as a strategy to treat obesity and disorders associated with excess weight, such as diabetes and metabolic syndrome.

The machinery responsible for energy production in fat cells is working poorly as a result of obesity. Finnish research done at the University of Helsinki and the National Public Health Institute shows that this may aggravate and work to maintain the obese state in humans.

A preschool-based intervention program helped prevent early trends toward obesity and instilled healthy eating habits in multi-ethnic 2- to 5-year-olds, according to a report presented at the American Heart Association’s Conference on Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism.

Genomics researchers, seeking to replicate another group’s discovery of an important gene associated with obesity, have further refined the signal to a particular variant in DNA that may be more helpful in identifying this gene’s role in obesity in various human populations worldwide.

With obesity still on the increase, it appears that the main weapon in the fight against it - reducing energy consumption by eating less - is ineffective. There is evident need to search for new treatment strategies dealing with the opposite aspect of the energy balance: increasing energy consumption.

Obese teenagers who succeeded in losing weight in a year-long medically supervised weight control program also saw their bone mineral content increase over that period, say researchers from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. The finding was reassuring, because adolescence is a critical period for bone health in later life.