Neighborhood property values predict local obesity rates better than education or incomes, according to a study from the University of Washington being published online this week by the journal Social Science and Medicine. For each additional $100,000 in the median price of homes, UW researchers found, obesity rates in a given ZIP code dropped by 2 percent.

In obese individuals, fat cells are bloated and inflamed because they receive too many nutrients, including lipids. In these cells, various components cannot work properly anymore and, instead, they activate new proteins to cope with the situation.

Scientists have discovered that leptin, one of the key hormones responsible for reducing hunger and increasing the feeling of fullness, also controls our fondness for food.

Mayo Clinic physicians have identified that simply being diagnosed as obese increases a patient’s likelihood of establishing a treatment plan with their physician, a crucial step in improving health. It’s a significant finding, because obesity is a growing worldwide epidemic and the second leading cause of preventable death in developing countries.

The U.S. obesity prevalence increased from 13 percent to 32 percent between the 1960s and 2004, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Human Nutrition. The prevalence of obesity and overweight has increased at an average rate of 0.3–0.8 percentage points across different sociodemographic groups over the past three decades.

Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have identified a long-sought "master switch" in mice for the production of brown fat, a type of adipose tissue that generates heat and counters obesity caused by overeating.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that a protein absorbs lipids in the upper part of the intestine, and they believe its key role in this process may provide a novel approach for obesity treatment in the future.

In what they call a “stunning research advance,” investigators at Georgetown University Medical Center have been able to use simple, non-toxic chemical injections to add and remove fat in targeted areas on the bodies of laboratory animals. They say the discovery, published online in Nature Medicine on July 1, could revolutionize human cosmetic and reconstructive plastic surgery and treatment of diseases associated with human obesity.

A search for the molecular clues of longevity has taken Mayo Clinic researchers down another path that could explain why some people who consume excessive calories don’t gain weight. The study, which was done in laboratory mouse models, points to the absence of a gene called CD38. When absent, the gene prevented mice on high-fat diets from gaining weight, but when present, the mice became obese.

Everyone knows that eating lean fish helps slim waistlines, but researchers from the Center for the Study of Weight Regulation and Associated Disorders at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, OR, have found a new way fish can help eliminate obesity. In a study to be published in the July 2007 print issue of The FASEB Journal, researchers describe the first genetic model of obesity in a fish.

Complications after bariatric surgery appear similar between patients younger and older than age 60 and also between Medicare recipients and non-recipients, according to a study in the June issue of Archives of Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare [NYSE: GSK] announces that alliâ„¢, the only FDA-approved over-the-counter weight loss product will be on shelves of pharmacies, grocery stores and mass merchandisers nationwide later this week. alli is designed to be a partner for overweight adults willing to change how they eat and lose weight gradually. Adding alli to diet and exercise can help people lose 50 per cent more weight than with dieting alone.