Weight Loss Programs: Obesity

The greater percentage of people in a city that list a healthy, active lifestyle under their Facebook interests, the lower that area's obesity rates are, a new study suggests.

The study, led by by Rumi Chunara, PhD, and John Brownstein, PhD, of Boston Children's Hospital's Informatics Program (CHIP), and published in PLOS ONE examined geo-tagged Facebook user data and data from national and New York City-focused health surveys.

The findings imply that knowing people's online interests within different geographical regions can aid public health investigators to predict, monitor and categorize obesity rates down to the neighborhood level, and present an opportunity to make geo-targeted online interventions focused on decreasing obesity rates.

The data that are accessible from social networks such as Facebook make it easy to accurately conduct research cohorts of a large size that would otherwise be unobtainable. They allow for more detailed research into the influence of the societal environment on health issues like obesity. Research of this type can sometimes be difficult because of several factors: costgathering a big enough sample sizeslow pace of data analysisuse of traditional reporting and surveillance systemsAccording to Brownstein, who runs the Computational Epidemiology Group within CHIP :

"Online social networks like Facebook represent a new high-value, low-cost data stream for looking at health at a population level. The tight correlation between Facebook users' interests and obesity data suggest that this kind of social network analysis could help generate real-time estimates of obesity levels in an area, help target public health campaigns that would promote healthy behavior change, and assess the success of those campaigns."

The researchers collected aggregated Facebook user interest data - what users post to their timeline, "like", and share with others on Facebook - from users all around the U.S. and just New York City. Then they compared the percentages of users who showed an interest in healthy activities or TV shows with data from two telephone-based health surveys: the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System-Selected Metropolitan/Micropolitan Area Risk Trends (BRFSS-SMART), and New York City's EpiQuery Community Health Survey (CHS).

Results revealed close relationships between obesity rates and Facebook interests. For example, the obesity rates from BRFSS-SMART were 12% lower in the parts of the U.S. where the highest percentage of Facebook users documented activity-related interests (Coeur d'Alene, Idaho), compared with locations with the lowest percentage (Kansas City, Mo.-Kan.).

Additionally, the obesity rate in the location with the highest percentage of users with television-related interests across the U.S. (Myrtle Beach-Conway-North Myrtle Beach, S.C.) was 3.9 percent greater than the location with the lowest percentage (Eugene-Springfield, Ore.).

Among the data from New York City neighborhoods, a similar outcome was seen, proving that the findings can range from national to local level data. The obesity rate on Coney Island was the highest rate of activity-related interests in the city and was 7.2% lower than Southwest Queens - the area with the lowest percentage.

The neighborhood with the highest percentage of television-related interests, Northeast Bronx, had considerably higher obesity rates than in the neighborhood with the lowest percentage (Greenpoint).

Chunara, an instructor in Brownstein's group concluded:

"The data show that in places where Facebook users have more activity-related interests, there is a lower prevalence of obesity and overweight. They reveal how social media data can augment public health surveillance by giving public health researchers access to population-level information that they can't otherwise get."

Other studies have also revealed that Facebook can be useful for other types of research. For instance a study by the University of Missouri suggests that Facebook activity can reveal clues about mental illness.

Written by Kelly Fitzgerald
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today

Visit our obesity / weight loss / fitness section for the latest news on this subject. "Assessing the Online Social Environment for Surveillance of Obesity Prevalence"
Rumi Chunara, Lindsay Bouton, John W. Ayers, John S. Brownstein
PLoS One, April 2013 Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:

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Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, have shown in a mouse model that infection with nematodes (also known as roundworms) can not only combat obesity but ameliorate related metabolic disorders. Their research is published ahead of print online in the journal Infection and Immunity.

Gastrointestinal nematodes infect approximately 2 billion people worldwide, and some researchers believe up until the 20th century almost everyone had worms. In developed countries there is a decreasing incidence of nematode infection but a rising prevalence of certain types of autoimmunity, suggesting a relationship between the two. Nematode infection has been purported to have therapeutic effects and currently clinical trials are underway to examine worms as a treatment for diseases associated with the relevant cytokines, including inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, and allergies.

In the study researchers tested the effect of nematode infection on mice fed a high-fat diet. Infected mice of normal girth gained 15 percent less weight than those that were not infected. Mice that were already obese when infected lost roughly 13 percent of their body weight within 10 days. Infection also drastically lowered fasting blood glucose, a risk factor for diabetes, and reduced fatty liver disease, decreasing liver fat by ~25 percent, and the weight of the liver by 30 percent.

The levels of insulin and leptin also dropped, "indicating that the mice restored their sensitivities to both hormones," says corresponding author Aiping Zhao of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore. Leptin moderates appetite. As with too much insulin, too high a level of leptin results in insensitivity, thus contributing to obesity and metabolic syndrome, Zhao explains.

The mechanism of the moderation of these hormones "was associated with a parasite-induced reduction in glucose absorption in the intestine, reduced liver triglycerides, and an increase in the population of cells called "alternatively activated macrophages," which regulate glucose metabolism and inflammation," says coauthor Joe Urban of the United States Department of Agriculture. Some of these changes involved "a protein called interleukin-13 and related intracellular signaling mechanisms," he says. "This suggests that there are immune related shifts in metabolism that can alter expression of obesity and related metabolic syndrome."

The incidence of obesity has been climbing dramatically, worldwide. It is a key risk factor for many metabolic diseases, including diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. Recent studies indicate that it is accompanied by chronic low-grade inflammation in adipose tissues, causing the release of proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines that contribute to the development of cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome.

Parasitic nematode infection induces a marked elevation in host immune Th2-cells and related type 2 cytokines which, besides combating the infection, also have potent anti-inflammatory activity, according to the report.

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our obesity / weight loss / fitness section for the latest news on this subject. A copy of the manuscript can be found online at http://bit.ly/asmtip0413d. Formal publication is scheduled for the June 2013 issue of Infection and Immunity.

(Z. Yang, V. Grinchuk, A. Smith, B. qin, J.A. Bohl, R. Sun, L. Notari, Z. Zhang, H. Sesaki, J.F. Urban, Jr., T. Shea-Donohue, A. Zhao, 2013. Parasitic nematode-induced modulation of body weight and associated metabolic dysfunction in mouse models of obesity. Infect. Immun. Published ahead of print 18 March 2013, doi:10.1128/IAI.00053-13.)

American Society for Microbiology

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