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Designers of anti-obesity drugs have suffered three major setbacks, but the potential reward from treating the world’s fat epidemic is so great that their quest is unlikely to be deterred.

After investing a sum rumoured to be in the hundreds of millions of euros (dollars), Sanofi-Aventis of France announced this month it was abandoning its drug rimonabant, which had stoked huge expectations at its launch in 2006.

Rimonabant — brand name Acomplia — ran into a flurry of ever-tougher warnings from European watchdogs about potential psychiatric side effects, including depression.

In October, the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) recommended that rimonabant be pulled from sale in Europe. The drug had never been able to gain approval in the all-important US market.

Also this month, the US giant Pfizer put a stop to tests of a prototype in late-stage development called CP-945,598, citing regulatory hurdles.

“The risk/benefit profile in this class of drugs was lower than expected for obtaining market authorisation,” said Catherine Baulac, in charge of new products with Pfizer’s French subsidiary.

And on October 2, Merck of the United States pulled the plug on its own experimental obesity fighter, taranabant, because of concerns about anxiety and depression at high doses.

The main causes of obesity — overconsumption of fatty or sugary food and a sedentary lifestyle — are well known. But the molecular machinery that drives it is in many ways obscure and, it is now suspected, more complex than thought.

Treating obesity entails a limited basket of options, from lifestyle changes to drugs and gastric-bypass surgery.

But when it comes to that middle choice, the most promising class of new prescription medicines for treating long-term obesity has just been wiped out.

The three scratched drugs belong to a group called cannabinoid receptor antagonists.

They take on the same target in the central nervous system as marijuana. But instead of sharpening appetite — the “munchies” associated with smoking cannabis — they work in reverse, dulling the urge to eat.

“There are now just two drugs left, orlistat and sibutramine,” said Colin Waine, a doctor who is chairman of a British organisation, the National Obesity Forum.

Anders Sjoedin, a specialist in obesity drugs at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, said cannabinoid receptor antagonists had now been discredited as an approach.

“Cannabinoid receptors not only regulate the appetite, they also affect mood,” he said.

Orlistat, marketed as Xenical or alli, curbs absorption of fat in the intestine by blocking a pancreatic enzyme. Sibutramine, sold as Reductil or Meridia, affects levels of a brain chemical called serotonin, believed to influence feelings of hunger or satiety.

Both are “very useful,” said Waine. But they come with a list of side effects, including, in orlistat’s case, the risk of sudden, oily faeces.

As proof of the glittering allure of the obesity market, drug engineers are exploring unusual paths.

According to the UN’s World Health Organisation (WHO), around 400 million adults were obese in 2005, and the tally is expected to balloon to more than 700 million in 2015.

In the lab, at least, are potential rivals to orlistat in the field of lipase inhibitors; new neurotransmitter inhibitors that reduce appetite; and even a hydrogel pill that expands in the stomach to give a sense of fullness.

But, should these prototypes ever get the green light to go on sale, will they meet the hopes of people desperate to lose dozens of kilos in a year, rather than just a few?

Even more important, are they safe?

Eleven years ago, the search for an obesity drug ran into controversy when fenfluramine, an appetite suppressant, was banned in the United States over fears of its effect on the heart.

This month, a study published in the journal BioMed Central found fenfluramine’s damage to cardiac valves was visible seven years later.

Such questions pose a dilemma for scientists much as they do for drug regulators.

Obesity is a huge and growing problem, for which people are clamouring for a quick fix. Yet it is also a complex condition, and no drug is without side effects to some degree.

Sjoedin said that researchers believed that regulators, especially in the United States, were becoming increasingly demanding about proposed obesity drugs.

Watchdogs were wanting to see more data about adverse effects from proposed drugs, as well as further proof of benefits other than weight loss, such as lower blood pressure.

“Obese people will be around, and I’m not sure that surgery is the solution for all them,” said Sjoedin.

“In that respect, there is a need for drugs. But no one is going to make a drug unless they can make money out of it in the end.”

Eating foods high in saturated fats — such as red and processed meats — may be a risk factor for cancer of the small intestine.

That’s the conclusion of a U.S. National Cancer Institute study that included half a million men and women who provided information about their eating habits over eight years.

Previous research had identified a link between red and processed meats and cancer of the large intestine, but this is the first prospective study to examine the association between meat and fat intake and cancer of the small intestine.

During the study, 60 adenocarcinomas and 80 carcinoid tumors of the small intestine were diagnosed among the participants, and an elevated risk for these cancers was associated with saturated fat intake, the NCI researchers reported in the current issue of the journal Cancer Research.

“Furthermore, there is some evidence to suggest that cancers of the small and large bowel both arise from adenomatous polyp precursor lesions, suggesting the adenoma-carcinoma sequence is relevant to both sites. For some unknown reason, the large intestine is much more susceptible to malignant transformation,” the study’s lead author, Amanda Cross, said in a news release.

“Identifying risk factors that are unique as well as those that are similar for the two sites may aid our understanding of the comparative resistance of the small intestine to carcinogenesis,” she added.

Cancer of the small intestine is relatively rare, but rates of the disease have been increasing since the 1970s. People who develop this type of cancer are at increased risk for developing a second primary cancer, particularly colorectal cancer, the researchers said.

“Identifying modifiable risk factors for cancer of the small intestine is important not only because the incidence of this cancer is on the rise, but it may enable us to further understand other gastrointestinal malignancies,” Cross said.

Eating a high-fat diet during pregnancy causes permanent changes in the fetal brain that can result in overeating and obesity early in life, according to a study with rats.

The researchers from Rockefeller University in New York City said their finding is an important advance in understanding mechanisms of fetal programming. It also sheds light on the production of new brain cells, helping to explain the dramatic rise of childhood obesity in the United States over the past three decades.

“We’ve shown that short-term exposure to a high-fat diet in utero produces permanent neurons in the fetal brain that later increase the appetite for fat,” study senior author Sarah F. Leibowitz, director of the Laboratory of Behavioral Neurobiology at Rockefeller, said in a university news release. “This work provides the first evidence for a fetal program that links high levels of fat circulating in the mother’s blood during pregnancy to the overeating and increased weight gain of offspring after weaning.”

For the study, pregnant rats were fed either a high-fat or a balanced diet for two weeks. Pups born to mothers that ate the high-fat diet ate more, weighed more throughout life, and began puberty earlier than pups born to mothers that ate a balanced diet. The pups born to the mothers that at the high-fat diet also had higher levels of triglycerides in the blood at birth and as adults, and also had greater production of brain peptides that stimulate eating and weight gain.

The study was published in the Nov. 12 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

The creation of neurons that increase the appetite for fat may also occur in human babies born to mothers who eat a high-fat diet during pregnancy, Leibowitz said.

“We’re programming our children to be fat,” she believes. “I think it’s very clear that there’s vulnerability in the developing brain, and we’ve identified the site of this action where new neurons are being born. We now need to understand how the lipids affect these precursor cells that form these fat-sensitive neurons that live with us throughout life.”

Feeling irritated because you can’t access the Internet? Well, may be it’s time to seek medical help as Internet addiction is now considered a clinical disorder rather than a bad habit, according to a new Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) diagnostic manual approved over the weekend by psychologists.The two major symptoms of IAD are lingering online for more than six hours a day instead of working or studying and having adverse reactions from not being able to get online, reports China Daily.

According to the manual, IAD sufferers usually engage in five main activities – Online gaming, net pornography, excessive involvement in virtual social networking, too much Internet shopping and general cyber-surfing.

Tao Ran, a leading medical professional on addiction in China who also headed the drafting of the manual, said that the guide would be the first of its kind in the world if the Ministry of Health officially approves it.

Racial disparities in cancer death rates from lung and other smoking-related cancers have narrowed since the early 1990s, while the gap has widened for some cancers whose death rates are more closely tied to screening and treatment, according to a new study published in Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention (CEBP).

The study, led by John Oliver DeLancey of the American Cancer Society?s Department of Epidemiology and Surveillance Research, was based on mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics from 1975 through 2004. DeLancey and colleagues compared the cancer death rates in whites and African Americans for all cancers combined, for lung and other smoking-related cancers (oral cavity, esophageal, pharynx, larynx, pancreas, bladder, kidney), and for 3 cancers that are more likely to be affected by screening and early treatment -? colorectal, and prostate.

The researchers found that the gap in overall cancer death rates between black and white Americans narrowed from the early 1990s through 2004, but that this trend was driven predominantly by a more rapid decrease in death rates in blacks than in whites, especially among men. More research is needed into what factors might be related to this difference, the researchers say.

“This study suggests that tobacco control measures appear to be working,” said DeLancey, noting that not only smoking prevalence, but the black-white differences in smoking prevalence, have decreased since the 1970s in men and women.

But in contrast to the closing mortality gap seen with smoking-related cancers, the gap actually widened for the 3 most common cancers that are thought to be most affected by screening and early detection — breast, colorectal, and prostate cancer. The researchers saw decreases in death rates for these cancers earlier and to a much larger extent in whites than in African Americans over the 30-year period.

The possible reasons for these findings weren?t addressed in this study, and there are likely several factors that influence these disparities, including tobacco use, sociodemographic factors, and access to care. African Americans have been historically less likely to be screened for breast and colorectal cancers than whites.

According to Cancer Facts and Figures for African Americans 2007-2008, the percentage of African-American adults being screened for colorectal cancer is less than 50%, despite improvements in these numbers in recent years. Compared to white men aged 50 and older, black men over 50 are less likely to get screened for prostate cancer. Black women are now just as likely as white women to get a mammogram to screen for breast cancer, but those efforts have yet to affect death rates. Whites are also more likely to receive appropriate treatment for breast, prostate, lung, or colorectal cancer, according to the study authors.

?This study did not explore the factors that may be influencing the results,? said DeLancey. ?We encourage more minority participants to enroll in studies such as Cancer Prevention Study- 3 (CPS-3) so we can learn more about what’s influencing these disparities.?

Frequent use of ecstasy, which is one of the most widely used illegal drugs in the UK, causes memory problems, according to a new study by Swansea University.

According to the research, ecstasy, causes users difficulty learning new facts.

To reach the conclusion, the study, which was led by Swansea University’’s head of psychology Professor Mark Blagrove, assessed the effects of ecstasy on story memory and skills learning.

In one of the tests, volunteers were asked to recall details of a short newspaper story about a fire on a farm. Those who had taken ecstasy two to three days before hearing about the article could only recall 83 per cent of the details that non-drug takers were able to recall.

“Importantly, the study ensured that the ecstasy users were obtaining as much sleep as the non-drug takers, and so this result is not due to lack of sleep or the drug-taking lifestyle,” the Independent quoted Professor Blagrove, as saying.

The study, which was carried out on several groups, including people who do not take illegal drugs; people who take various drugs but don”t take ecstasy; ecstasy users who had taken the drug two to three days before the first testing session; and ecstasy users who had not taken the drug for at least eight days before the first testing session, also looked at how well ecstasy users could learn a typing task.

Professor Blagrove said: “In contrast to the story memory task, the ecstasy users had no problems learning this skill. Consequently, it appears that ecstasy seems to affect memory for facts rather than the learning of new motor skills.

“The study means that certain aspects of work and employment will be a problem for frequent ecstasy users. Although they may be able to learn simple skills, the more complicated learning of knowledge, as a series of facts, is harmed by ecstasy.”

The research found that the drug’’s active chemical, MDMA, affects the brain chemical serotonin, which aids the transmission of messages between nerve cells.

It is reckoned that serotonin plays an important role in how the human body processes thoughts and regulates sleeping and eating patterns.

Scientists have found evidence that Beta-alanine (BA), a dietary supplement widely used by athletes and body builders, can boost fitness levels in older adults.

BA is an amino acid that, together with histidine, forms the dipeptide carnosine.

Carnosine is found in muscle tissue and makes an important contribution to the maintenance of intracellular pH, which is vital for normal muscle function during intense exercise. An increased intake of BA significantly raises muscle carnosine levels.

The study, led by Jeffrey Stout, PhD from the University of Oklahoma, USA, also suggested that BA supplementation improves muscle endurance in the elderly.

“This could have importance in the prevention of falls, and the maintenance of health and independent living in elderly men and women,” said Stout.

Scientists recruited 26 elderly men and women in this double-blind, randomized controlled trial, in which all the participants were given a 90-day course of BA supplementation or placebo pills.

Then, the researchers tested their fitness levels before and after the course.

In the treatment group, 67 percent of the subjects showed an improvement in their fitness levels, compared to 21.5 percent of the people receiving the placebo treatment.

“Our data suggest that 90 days of BA supplementation increases physical working capacity in elderly men and women. These findings are clinically significant, as a decrease in functional capacity to perform daily living tasks has been associated with an increase in mortality, primarily due to increased risk of falls,” wrote the researchers.

The study was published in BioMed Central’’s open access Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition.

One of the most important things to remember about health insurance is that you get the right mix of coverage and cost. You don’t want to needlessly waste money on a gold plan if you don’

t need it, but you don’t want to get stuck with a cheap firm. You need to find the right company that offers affordable health insurance.

This isn’t as hard as you might think. Just calling around should get you some good advice on the matter. You will be able to discern just what each policy offers and what the relevant costs will be for your service. Just keep writing notes down and pay attention to your own status. There is bound to be one company that falls within your bounds. It might just be Blue Cross health insurance. They are known for offering a fairly good mix of quality health care and affordable prices. Just a little bit of work and you should find the policy that works best for you.

I know it isn’t a lot of fun to look for health insurance, but it’s just something that you have to do. Use the tools at hand and be done with it quickly.

For smokers with rheumatoid arthritis, kicking the butt might help in controlling its progression, according to a study.Smoking is known to increase the risk and severity of RA, and its cessation has been shown to have a positive impact in slowing the progression of other diseases like coronary disease and emphysema.

The researchers conducted the study over 14,847 patients with RA based on their smoking status.

Of those, 65.4 per cent were non-smokers, 22.1 per cent were former smokers and12.5 per cent were active smokers.

Most adults discriminate against HIV/AIDS patients, shows a survey based on six major cities in China.The survey, which covered 6,000 people, was conducted from February to March conducted by Renmin University of China.

The financial and technical support was provided to them by UNAIDS.

In the study, 30 percent said children suffering from HIV/AIDS should not be allowed to attend school, 65 percent were not willing to stay in the same room as a sufferer, and 48 percent would not share a meal with them, reports the China Daily. “HIV/AIDS discrimination must be eliminated in order to encourage sufferers to seek treatment,” Edwin Cameron, a South African AIDS prevention expert, said.According to Bernhard Schwartlander, United Nations country coordinator on HIV/AIDS in Beijing, the virus is not unmanageable medically, and people seeking treatment can keep it under control.

However, some people refuse to seek treatment, because they are afraid to let others know of their illness.

“People I have encountered in China have told me they suffer from discrimination, and some of them have stopped in the middle of treatment,” Cameron said.

“People die from it and I think it is a tragedy as the Chinese Government provides good programs,” the expert added.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said the number of deaths from HIV/AIDS can decrease globally with proper and timely treatment.