As many as 50 percent of overweight men and women with high blood pressure may have hypertension as a result of being overweight, researchers reported today at the American Heart Association’s 61st Annual Fall Conference of the Council for High Blood Pressure Research.

The global obesity epidemic was issued with a further health warning- that obesity exacerbates the quality of life of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). New data presented at EULAR 2007, the Annual European Congress of Rheumatology in Barcelona, Spain, shows that RA in obese patients is associated with worse quality of life outcomes on four key levels: pain, fatigue, physical function and overall utility scores.