One year after giving birth, women were less likely to have the most dangerous kind of obesity if they had been given probiotics from the first trimester of pregnancy, found new research that suggests manipulating the balance of bacteria in the gut may help fight obesity.

Safer and more effective drugs to fight obesity appear to be around the corner, but researchers still await a complete understanding of the biological underpinnings of the complex disease, according to an article scheduled for the April 13 issue of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS' weekly newsmagazine.

With obesity reaching epidemic levels, researchers at the Ohio State University Medical Center are studying a potentially long-term treatment that involves injecting a gene directly into one of the critical feeding and weight control centers of the brain.

Counselling via the phone and internet can help weight management in overweight individuals, according to a Dutch study published in the open access journal, BMC Public Health.

Obesity is known to increase the risk of chronic disorders, such as diabetes (type 2). An international team of scientists with German participation through the Helmholtz Zentrum München identified six new obesity genes. Gene expression analyses have shown that all six genes are active in brain cells.

The discovery more than a decade ago of leptin, an appetite-suppressing hormone secreted by fat tissue, generated headlines and great hopes for an effective treatment for obesity. But hopes dimmed when it was found that obese people are unresponsive to leptin due to development of leptin resistance in the brain.

Severely obese patients who have lost significant amounts of weight by changing their diet and exercise habits may be as successful in keeping the weight off long-term as those individuals who lost weight after bariatric surgery, according to a new study published online by the International Journal of Obesity.

In the battle against obesity, Yale University researchers may have discovered a new weapon — a naturally occurring molecule secreted by the gut that makes rats and mice less hungry after fatty meals. The findings are published in the Nov. 26 issue of the journal Cell.

Many children love sending and receiving text messages through their cell phones – sometimes to the great annoyance of their parents.

A study appearing November 5 in the journal Cell Metabolism demonstrates that a synthetic new chemical entity protects against diet-induced obesity, improves glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity and enhances exercise endurance by enhancing fat utilization in certain target tissues.

As millions of Americans gear up for the Thanksgiving holiday, a new research report published online in The FASEB Journal may provide some relief for those leery of having a second helping.

It's no secret that reading is beneficial. But can it help kids lose weight? In the first study to look at the impact of literature on obese adolescents, researchers at Duke Children's Hospital discovered that reading the right type of novel may make a difference.