(Press-News.org) Malnutrition is a known complication of weight loss surgery, but findings from a small study by researchers at Johns Hopkins show many obese people may be malnourished before they undergo the procedure.
"Our results highlight the often-overlooked paradox that abundance of food and good nutrition are not one and the same," says senior investigator Kimberley Steele, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "Overweight and obese people can suffer from nutritional deficiencies, and those who care for them should be aware of it."
The results, described online Aug. 22 in the journal Obesity Surgery, fly in the face of the commonly held belief that reduced food consumption following bariatric, or weight loss, surgery is the main driver of nutritional deficiencies, Steele says. Because the surgery works by reducing the amount of food absorbed by the body, patients get vitamin supplements as part of their standard postoperative care. But the new findings, which reveal multiple nutritional deficiencies in more than 20 percent of patients preparing to undergo surgery, suggest that a nutritional workup should also be part of the presurgical care, the researchers say.
"Finding and correcting the problem before surgery would likely blunt or avert surgery-induced malnutrition in some patients," she concludes.
For the study, investigators performed nutritional assessments in 58 patients, ages 18 to 65, scheduled to undergo bariatric surgery at Johns Hopkins. They analyzed blood levels of vitamins A, B12, D and E, as well as iron, folate and thiamine.
One in five patients had three or more deficiencies. The most prevalent were subpar levels of iron -- in 36 percent -- and vitamin D, in 71 percent.
By comparison, the average rate of iron deficiency in the general population is 2 percent for men and 9 percent for women. The researchers say that an estimated 42 percent of the general population is deficient in vitamin D, adding that vitamin D deficiency is also a common metabolic aberration of obesity. Even so, the researchers say, the average vitamin D level among patients in the study was well below that seen in the average adult -- 17 nanograms per milliliter of blood, compared with 22 in the general population.
And because nutritional deficiencies -- notably vitamin D -- are believed to precipitate problems such as inflammation, higher infection risk and delayed wound healing, addressing them early on is particularly important in patients before they undergo surgery, researchers say.
"Correcting malnutrition is not only easier before surgery, but it may also play a role in reducing surgical complications in the short term and improving overall health in the long run," says study first author Leigh Peterson, Ph.D., M.H.S., a nutritionist and postdoctoral research fellow at the Johns Hopkins Center for Bariatric Surgery.
The investigators point out that a well-balanced, healthy diet should also be incorporated into the presurgical consult.
"While deficiencies require carefully dosed supplementation, eating nutritious, quality food should be at the core of all dietary interventions," Peterson says.
INFORMATION:
Other investigators include Lawrence Cheskin, Margaret Furtado, Konstantinos Papas, Michael Schweitzer and Thomas Magnuson, all of Johns Hopkins.
Telecommunication networks will soon reach the physical limits of current technology and in order to overcome the current bottleneck, they will have to exploit the quantum properties of light. Roberto Morandotti and his INRS team are paving the way to this technological revolution by removing the technical barriers of quantum photonics through the use of their optical chips. Recently they directly generated cross-polarized (orthogonal) photon pairs on a chip, a first in quantum optics. Polarization will now be among the controllable parameters for harnessing light in a ...
The first images of motor proteins in action are published in the journal Nature Communications today.
These proteins are vital to complex life, forming the transport infrastructure that allows different parts of cells to specialise in particular functions. Until now, the way they move has never been directly observed.
Researchers at the University of Leeds and in Japan used electron microscopes to capture images of the largest type of motor protein, called dynein, during the act of stepping along its molecular track.
Dr Stan Burgess, at the University of Leeds' ...
Elephants born into stressful situations have fewer offspring and age faster, researchers at the University of Sheffield have found.
Scientists discovered that Asian elephants born during times when their mothers experience highest stress levels produce significantly fewer offspring in their lifetime despite having higher rates of reproduction at an early age.
The research team, from the University's Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, also found that those animals born under stress declined much more rapidly in older age, decades later.
Lead author Dr Hannah ...
Eating a Mediterranean diet supplemented with extra virgin olive oil was associated with a relatively lower risk of breast cancer in a study of women in Spain, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine.
Breast cancer is a frequently diagnosed cancer and a leading cause of death in women. Diet has been extensively studied as a modifiable risk factor in the development of breast cancer but epidemiologic evidence on the effect of specific dietary factors is inconsistent.
The Mediterranean diet is known for its abundance of plant foods, fish and ...
A new study reveals that insurance status, marital status, and county-level income may affect the chances of survival in young patients with acute myelogenous leukemia (AML). Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the findings indicate that efforts are needed to address the social factors that impact critical aspects of health in these patients.
AML will affect approximately 20,830 and kill 10,460 Americans in 2015. Tremendous progress has been made in identifying disease characteristics that cause a patient to have ...
A new protocol to treat babies born in withdrawal from drugs can be used widely to improve outcomes for these babies.
The protocol reduces length of stay and the duration of treatment with opioids that are used therapeutically to wean babies off of drugs.
"The incidence of neonatal abstinence syndrome after an infant's in utero exposure to opioids has risen dramatically in recent years," says Eric Hall, PhD, a researcher in the Perinatal Institute at Cincinnati Children's and lead author of the study. "After adoption of the protocol, opioid treatment went from 34 to ...
Pedalling like Chris Froome or Alberto Contador might seem appealing, but Oxford University researchers have found that for most of us it's likely to reduce rather than improve our performance.
A team from Oxford's Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences looked at a common measure of aerobic fitness called VO2 max. While it can be measured accurately in a laboratory, it is often more practical to use techniques that estimate VO2 max for individuals by getting them to exercise to their maximal level. These include the 'bleep test' of shuttle runs used by police forces ...
Astronomers have successfully peered through the 'amniotic sac' of a star that is still forming to observe the innermost region of a burgeoning solar system for the first time.
In a research paper published today in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, an international team of astronomers describe surprising findings in their observations of the parent star, which is called HD 100546.
Lead author Dr Ignacio Mendigutía, from the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leeds, said: "Nobody has ever been able to probe this close ...
New research published in Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes) shows that current and former users of marijuana are more likely to have prediabetes--the state of poor blood sugar control that can progress to type 2 diabetes--than never users of marijuana. However the researchers, led by Mike Bancks (University of Minnesota School of Public Health, Minneapolis, MN, USA) failed to establish a direct link between marijuana use and type 2 diabetes.
Marijuana is the most frequently used illicit drug in America (and is estimated to ...
Bremerhaven (Germany), 14th September 2015. This Saturday at a conference in Quebec, Canada an international research team will present the first online data portal on global permafrost. In the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost researchers first collect all the existing permafrost temperature and active thickness layer data from Arctic, Antarctic and mountain permafrost regions and then make it freely available for download. This new portal can serve as an early warning system for researchers and decision-makers around the globe. A detailed description of the data ...
