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The first-ever Cleveland-based study will explore whether an exercise and nutrition program designed for mothers before they conceive will result in less childhood obesity. "Until now, similar intervention programs, which have only had limited success, were introduced after women became pregnant," said co-principal investigator Patrick M. Catalano, MD, professor of reproductive biology at Case Western Reserve and director of Reproductive Health and Clinical Research at MetroHealth . "To our knowledge, this is the first study that seeks to prevent childhood obesity before a planned pregnancy. Our hypothesis is that interventions after women become pregnant are too late to see the kinds of meaningful improvements in child and maternal health everyone is looking for." Through nutrition, exercise, and education, the Lifestyle Intervention in Preparation for Pregnancy program (LIPP) will seek to reduce body fat and improve glucose and lipid metabolism in overweigh...

The investigators have shown that a lipid (a fat-like substance) called 12,13-diHOME that circulates in the blood signals brown fat cells in mice to fuel up with other lipids, says Matthew Lynes, a Joslin postdoctoral researcher and lead author on a paper describing the work in the journal  Nature Medicine . In one experiment, obese mice given low levels of the molecule produced reduced levels of blood triglycerides -- other forms of lipids that can increase risks for heart disease and diabetes in humans. Although the Joslin team hasn't shown that 12,13-diHOME also triggers brown fat activation in humans, the lipid could aid research by acting as a biomarker for the process, notes Yu-Hua Tseng, Ph.D., a Joslin principal investigator and senior author on the paper. Today, researchers in the field must detect brown fat activation by injecting volunteers with tiny amounts of radioactive glucose and scanning them via positron emission tomography (PET), which is a difficult and expe...