News & Notes, January 2010

Not “Just the Fat, Ma’am”
Just in time for New Year’s resolutions, an international team of researchers has reported that fat intake may not be Public Enemy #1 when it comes to weight gain. Among more than 89,000 participants in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (58% women; mean age, 53), mean fat intake ranged from 31.5% to 36.5% of total calories. Adjusted data revealed no significant association between fat intake (in terms of amount or type) and weight change. Mean annual weight change per 1 g/d of energy-adjusted fat intake was 0.90 g/year for men and –1.30 g/year for women. Lead author Dr. Nita G. Forouhi told Reuters Health that the findings, which appeared in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, should not provide carte blanche for fat consumption but do indicate that “it is more important to aim for a healthy lifestyle, including a balanced healthy diet and regular physical activity, than to focus on fat intake alone as a factor for weight gain.”

H1N1’s Pandemic Pattern
Autopsy reports, hospital records, and other data sources indicate that the strain of H1N1 influenza circulating in 2009 damages cells throughout the respiratory airway. Microscopic examination of airway tissue from 34 persons who died of the infection last summer revealed damage primarily to the upper airway (trachea and bronchial tubes) but also to the lower airway, including deep into the lungs. More than half of the deceased exhibited evidence of secondary bacterial infection. Researchers from the NIH and the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, who compiled the report, say the pulmonary damage caused by H1N1 infection resembles that caused by the viruses responsible for the 1918 and 1957 influenza pandemics. The findings appeared in Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.

Prevention Efforts Up in Smoke
States are collecting record amounts of revenue from the 1998 tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, but are cutting funding to tobacco prevention and smoking cessation programs. In the past year, states have cut funding for these programs by 15%. For FY2010, the states will collect $25 billion in revenue from tobacco companies and sales of their products; just 2.3% of that money is being spent on programs to reduce tobacco use—which Nancy Brown from the American Heart Association said is “a travesty.” A full report, A Broken Promise to Our Children: The 1998 State Tobacco Settlement 11 Years Later, is available at www.tobaccofreekids.org.

Mozart Helps Babies Grow
Researchers exposed healthy preterm infants to music by Mozart—not to turn them into pint-size connoisseurs but to determine what effect the music would have on resting energy expenditure (REE). Lubetzky and colleagues hypothesized that exposure to Mozart’s work would reduce infants’ REE, which in turn might enable them to gain weight and grow faster. REE was similar among infants who were and were not exposed to music during the first 10-minute interval of the trial. However, during the second and third 10-minute intervals, which involved crossover, infants exposed to music had a significantly lower REE than they did when not exposed to music. The average reduction in REE was 10% to 13%. Mozart’s repetition of melodies may explain the effect of his music on REE in infants, the investigators write in Pediatrics.