Overweight kids face widespread stigma
Thu, 12 Jul 2007 07:54:45 GMT
By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN, Associated Press Writer
NEW HAVEN, Conn. - Overweight children are stigmatized by their peers as early as age 3 and even face bias from their parents and teachers, giving them a quality of life comparable to people with cancer, a new analysis concludes.
Youngsters who report teasing, rejection, bullying and other types of abuse because of their weight are two to three times more likely to report suicidal thoughts as well as to suffer from other health issues such as high blood pressure and eating disorders, researchers said.
"The stigmatization directed at obese children by their peers, parents, educators and others is pervasive and often unrelenting," researchers with Yale University and the University of Hawaii at Manatoa wrote in the July issue of Psychological Bulletin.
The paper was based on a review of all research on youth weight bias over the past 40 years, said lead author Rebecca M. Puhl of Yale's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.
It comes amid a growing worldwide epidemic of child obesity. By 2010, almost 50 percent of children in North America and 38 percent of children in the European Union will be overweight, the researchers said.
While programs to prevent childhood obesity are growing, more efforts are needed to protect overweight children from abuse, Puhl said.
"The quality of life for kids who are obese is comparable to the quality of life of kids who have cancer," Puhl said, citing one study. "These kids are facing stigma from everywhere they look in society, whether it's media, school or at home."
Even with a growing percentage of overweight people, the stigma shows no signs of subsiding, according to Puhl. She said television and other media continue to reinforce negative stereotypes.
"This is a form of bias that is very socially acceptable," Puhl said. "It is rarely challenged; it's often ignored."
The stigmatization of overweight children has been documented for decades. When children were asked to rank photos of children as friends in a 1961 study, the overweight child was ranked last.
Children as young as 3 are more likely to consider overweight peers to be mean, stupid, ugly and sloppy.
A growing body of research shows that parents and educators are also biased against heavy children. In a 1999 study of 115 middle and high school teachers, 20 percent said they believed obese people are untidy, less likely to succeed and more emotional.
"Perhaps the most surprising source of weight stigma toward youths is parents," the report says.
Several studies showed that overweight girls got less college financial support from their parents than average weight girls. Other studies showed teasing by parents was common.
"It is possible that parents may take out their frustration, anger and guilt on their overweight child by adopting stigmatizing attitudes and behavior, such as making critical and negative comments toward their child," the authors wrote, suggesting further research is needed.
Lynn McAfee, 58, of Stowe, Pa., said that as an overweight child she faced troubles on all fronts.
"It was constantly impressed upon me that I wasn't going to get anywhere in the world if I was fat," McAfee said. "You hear it so often, it becomes the truth."
Her mother, who also was overweight, offered to buy her a mink coat when she was 8 to try to get her to lose weight even though her family was poor.
"I felt I was letting everybody down," she said.
Other children would try to run her down on bikes to see if she would bounce. She had a hard time getting on teams in the playground.
"Teachers did not stand up for me when I was teased," McAfee said.
A study in 2003 found that obese children had much lower quality of life scores on issues such as health, emotional and social well-being, and school functioning.
"An alarming finding of this research was that obese children had scores comparable with those of children with cancer," the researchers reported.
Sylvia Rimm, author of "Rescuing the Emotional Lives of Overweight Children," said her surveys of more than 5,000 middle school children reached similar conclusions.
"The overweight children felt less intelligent," Rimm said. "They felt less popular. They struggled from early on. They feel they are a different species."
Parents should emphasize a child's strengths, she said, and teachers should pair up students for activities instead of letting children pick their partners.
McAfee, who now works for the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination, said her childhood experiences even made her reluctant to see a doctor when she needed one. She recalled one doctor who said she looked like a gorilla and another who gave her painkillers and diet pills for what turned out to be mononucleosis.
"The amount of cruelty I've seen in people has changed me forever," McAfee said.
The Yale-Hawaii research report recommends more research to determine whether negative stereotypes lead to discriminatory behavior, citing evidence that overweight adults face discrimination. It also calls for studying ways to reduce stigma and negative attitudes toward overweight children.
"Weight-based discrimination is as important a problem as racial discrimination or discrimination against children with physical disabilities," the report concludes. "Remedying it needs to be taken equally seriously..."
Cancer risk higher with Western diet
Thu, 12 Jul 2007 02:20:31 GMT
By JOANN LOVIGLIO, Associated Press Writer
PHILADELPHIA - Older Chinese women who eat a Western-style diet loaded with meats and sweets appear to have a greater risk for breast cancer than women who eat mainly soy and vegetables, a new study has concluded.
Previous research has found connections between a meat- and fat-heavy Western diet and several kinds of cancer, as well as heart disease and diabetes. And other research has identified links between obesity and cancer.
Researchers said this study signals a link between breast cancer and overall eating patterns — not a single food or nutrient — in Asian women, who have long had lower rates of the disease than Western women. But their numbers have started to rise as their diets have become more Westernized.
The study, which is not definitive, looked at general eating habits of about 3,000 women in Shanghai, ranging in age from 25 to 64. About half of that group had been diagnosed with breast cancer and are participants in an ongoing breast cancer study in Shanghai.
All the women were interviewed at length about their diets, answering questions about how often they ate 76 different items commonly found in Shanghai. Researchers then categorized the women into one of two dietary groups.
The "meat-sweet" group loaded up on red meat, shrimp, fish, candy, desserts, bread and milk. The "vegetable-soy" group stuck to tofu, vegetables, sprouts, beans, fish and soy milk.
Post-menopausal women in the meat-sweet group showed a 60 percent greater risk of developing the most common kind of breast cancer, the kind fueled by the hormone estrogen, compared to those in the vegetable-soy group, according to U.S. and Chinese researchers who conducted the study.
"We saw the clearest effect when we looked at post-menopausal women who were overweight, so it looks like there's an interaction between a meat-sweet diet and being overweight," said study co-author Marilyn Tseng, of Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.
Researchers couldn't say how the combination of a Western diet and obesity might work in tandem to drive breast cancer.
The study, which appears in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, found no link, good or bad, between breast cancer and a vegetable-soy diet.
"This isn't a breakthrough, but it does add to the growing body of evidence that diet is related to breast cancer and other cancers," said Lawrence Cheskin, associate professor of international health and human nutrition at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who was not connected to the study.
"We see a rise in cancers depending on what we're eating and if we're obese."
Tseng also said that the research should be a less frustrating guide for anybody looking to adopt sensible eating habits, instead of often contradictory research that names one vitamin, mineral or food as a cancer-quashing magic bullet.
"This gives us a broader sense because it looks at diet as a whole as opposed to targeting one element," Tseng said. "In terms of public health recommendations, that tends to give the wrong impression that you can reduce your risk of breast cancer by going after one specific component."
Newborns tested for genetic disorders
Wed, 11 Jul 2007 23:03:41 GMT
WASHINGTON - Good news for the nation's babies: Nearly 90 percent of newborns are getting tested for a host of rare but devastating genetic disorders. Since 2004, specialists have urged that every U.S. newborn be checked for 29 conditions, to detect the few thousand who will need early treatment to avoid death, retardation or other serious problems.
The federal government hasn't issued national screening guidelines, but more states are following the advice on their own. As of June 1, 40 states required testing for more than 20 of those disorders, says a March of Dimes report issued Wednesday.
Topping the list, 13 states plus Washington, D.C., required testing of every newborn for the entire list of 29 conditions, which range from sickle cell anemia and cystic fibrosis to lesser known diseases such as the metabolic disorder LCHAD.
New Hampshire also began testing for all 29 conditions on July 1, after the report's deadline.
The report marks steady progress: Just 38 percent of babies were born in states with intensive screening when the March of Dimes counted in 2005, and 64 percent last year. This year, that number rises to 87.5 percent of newborns, or about 3.6 million babies, the child advocacy group calculated.
Still, almost half a million infants are born in states that require testing for 12 or fewer of the conditions, the analysis found. They include Arkansas, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Washington. Three more — Kansas, Montana and West Virginia — passed legislation this year requiring checks for all 29 disorders, but that expanded testing hasn't yet begun.
While some states tout testing for even more conditions, the 29 on this "core list" — hearing loss plus 28 genetic diseases that can be diagnosed using a single drop of blood — are those deemed most important for screening by the American College of Medical Genetics.
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On the Net:
March of Dimes: http://www.marchofdimes.com/peristats
National database on state testing: http://genes-r-us.uthscsa.edu/
House OKs bill to improve drug safety
Thu, 12 Jul 2007 01:05:52 GMT
By ANDREW BRIDGES, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Seeking to avoid another Vioxx debacle, the House voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to give federal health officials more money and power to police the safety of prescription drugs.
The House approved 403-16 a bill giving the Food and Drug Administration nearly $400 million, collected as fees from the drug industry, to spend on drug safety over the next five years. The Senate already has approved similar legislation.
Both bills would give the agency the ability to require drug companies to do follow-up studies on certain medicines.
"It's become increasingly clear FDA needs more of two things: It needs more resources and more authority, particularly in the area of postmarketing surveillance," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.
The House version would require the FDA to review the safety of certain drugs annually for the first three years following approval and then again during the seventh year. It also would require drug ads to include a toll-free number and Web address for consumers to report side effects and would permit only a single outside expert with a potential conflict of interest to be cleared to serve on any agency advisory panel.
Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, criticized the restriction on those outside advisers, noting it's already difficult to find scientists who are experts in some fields.
"This irrational standard will only make it harder," said Burgess. Burgess also praised the earlier stripping out of a provision that would have limited drug companies from advertising new drugs directly to consumers. Such a limit had raised free speech concerns.
The FDA was criticized for being too slow to respond once serious problems were linked to the painkiller Vioxx. Merck & Co. Inc. voluntarily withdrew the drug in 2004 after research showed it doubled the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
The legislation's underlying purpose is to renew, through 2012, a program that has the drug industry pay fees to the agency to defray the cost of reviewing new medicines. In the wake of the Vioxx withdrawal and subsequent problems with other drugs, lawmakers seized on the legislation to overhaul how the FDA handles the safety of the drugs it regulates. The bill gathers together other legislation as well, including the reauthorization of a medical device industry user fee program.
The House bill also would give the FDA authority to require further studies of drugs after they're already on the market — and require pharmaceutical companies to submit timetables for their completion. The FDA also could order label changes to a drug or restrict its use or distribution.
Both the House and Senate bills require the FDA to increase its active surveillance of emerging problems with drugs. The bills call for the mining of large health care databases for signs of unanticipated drug side effects.
Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., said the goal there was "reducing the likelihood of another Vioxx situation, when reported adverse effects went unheard."
The House and Senate are expected to resolve the differences between the versions in coming weeks.
The Senate earlier voided — and the House didn't include at all — a provision that would have allowed consumers to buy cheaper prescription drugs from abroad. The White House has threatened to veto the FDA bill if it contains such a provision.
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The House bill is H.R. 2900
For bill information: http://thomas.loc.gov/
