What the scientists are saying…
Does weight gain affect taste?
Becoming obese may dull a person’s taste buds, which could explain why people get trapped in a cycle of overconsumption. For a study at Cornell University, two groups of mice – one genetically engineered to be resistant to obesity – were placed on the same high-fat diet. After eight weeks, the normal mice not only weighed more, but had about 25% fewer taste buds, suggesting that losing them is a metabolic response to obesity. Previous studies have found that obese people report a diminishing sense of taste, and also that when people have their sense of taste suppressed, they tend to gravitate towards sweet, calorie-rich foods. Taken together, this could mean that when people gain weight, they become even more drawn to unhealthy foods – which may be an overlooked factor in why so many struggle to shed the pounds. The study was only on mice, but lead researcher Dr Robin Dando described human taste buds as “working pretty similarly”. If the same process is found to occur in humans, it could open up new ways of treating obesity, he said.
Back pain treatments “useless”
Most treatments for low back pain simply do not work, an international team of scientists writing in The Lancet has warned. The condition is now the world’s leading cause of disability: an estimated 540 million people are affected and that number is growing as populations age. But back pain is not properly understood, the scientists say, and is being widely mismanaged, with many patients prescribed aggressive treatments including spinal injections, powerful opioids and surgeries that are of “dubious benefit” and may in fact do harm. They advise that for most types of back pain, the best advice is simply to remain active and remain positive: a positive attitude and job satisfaction are some of the strongest indicators of whether back pain will turn into serious disability, they say. Current NHS guidelines recommend exercise and therapy. However, this not what patients always want to hear, putting doctors under pressure to offer them non-existent cures. In the UK, many patients are sent off for scans that lead to surgery – although in most cases, surgery is no more effective than non-invasive treatments and it risks leaving patients worse off. A third are prescribed potentially addictive opioid painkillers, but there is evidence that these can make back pain worse.
“Game changer” for MS
The progress of multiple sclerosis has been halted – and in some cases reversed – by a stem cell treatment that “reboots” patients’ immune systems. MS develops when the immune system malfunctions and begins to attack the myelin sheaths surrounding cells in the central nervous system. For some time, scientists have been experimenting with treatments that wipe out the defective immune system with powerful drugs, before “rebooting” it by injecting stem cells into the blood. The problem with this approach is its inherent riskiness: in previous trials, patients have died after being stripped of their immune systems. But the new approach seems to be much safer. For the study, more than 100 patients in four countries, all with relapsing MS (the most common kind), either received a standard drug treatment or the stem cell procedure. Three years later, there were no reported deaths and there were significant differences in the outcomes of the two groups: while 60% of those receiving drugs had relapsed, only 6% of the stem cell group had. One British participant, Louise Willetts, appeared completely cured: “It feels like my diagnosis was just a bad dream because I have just gone back to how I was before I got diagnosed,” she told the BBC. Presenting the findings at a conference in Portugal, the researchers described the results as a “game changer” that could revolutionise MS treatment. However, others urged caution, pointing out that these are preliminary findings and the trial hasn’t yet been peer reviewed.
Medical file: eggs
With fears about sugar consumption leading many people to avoid cereal, eggs are making a comeback to the breakfast table. According to the British Egg Industry Council, the typical Brit now eats an egg every other day – the highest rate since the “peak” of the late 1970s, when the average was two eggs every three days.