GDF15 tells the brain to lose weight

To Lose Weight or Not to Lose Weight, That Is the Big Question—in Obesity-Related Heart Failure

Obesity and heart failure (HF) are twin public health problems. Moreover, obesity can contribute to HF (1). Each contributes to increased mortality. Conversely, weight loss in obese patients without HF improves diastolic function and decreases oxygen requirements and left ventricular (LV) mass (2,3). In two large studies, surgery-induced weight loss reduced cardiac death and improved survival i...

When the brain tells the blood how to clot.

In this issue of Blood, Tian et al report that during traumatic brain injury, small membrane vesicles, called microparticles, disseminate procoagulant factors from the brain into the systemic circulation. The delivery appears to occur through the disrupted blood-brain barrier.

Fat People Lose Weight Communally

How Much the Eye Tells the Brain

In the classic "What the frog's eye tells the frog's brain," Lettvin and colleagues showed that different types of retinal ganglion cell send specific kinds of information. For example, one type responds best to a dark, convex form moving centripetally (a fly). Here we consider a complementary question: how much information does the retina send and how is it apportioned among different cell typ...

Are health care professionals advising obese patients to lose weight?

CONTEXT Implementation of the National Institutes of Health's 1998 guidelines, which recommended that health care professionals advise obese patients to lose weight, required baseline data for evaluation. OBJECTIVES To describe the proportion and characteristics of obese persons advised to lose weight by their health care professional during the previous 12 months and to determine whether the...