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Discovered: Weight loss surgery fails to reduce diabetes; E. coli often comes from cities, not cattle; big guts could mean brittle bones for men; sea levels rose nearly half an inch over past 20 years.
Weight loss surgery won't reverse diabetes. A few months ago, a pair of papers came out claiming that weight loss surgery worked better than standard treatments for type 2 diabetes. Let's maybe walk back those findings, argue researchers led by David E. Arterburn from the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle. They found that many obese diabetics who undergo gastric bypass surgery don't experience significant drop-off in their disease. But Arterburn does admit that early intervention surgery tends to curb type 2 diabetes somewhat, and he's not arguing against weight loss surgery entirely: "It’s not a surefire cure for everyone. But almost universally, patients lose weight after weight loss surgery, and that in and of itself may have so many health benefits." [The New York Times]
Let's not forget city E. coli. Whenever we hear news of an E. coli breakout, the contamination is usually bovine in origin. But USDA Agricultural Research Service scientists found that the bacteria in Californian bodies of water is usually runoff from urban areas, not feedlots. USDA researcher Mark Ibekwe and colleagues collected 450 water samples, from 20 sites along the Santa Ana River Watershed, finding that most traces of E. coli—pathogenic or not—were caused by humans, not cows. They also found that a staggering 88 to 95 percent of isolated E. coli samples were resistant to various antibiotics. [USDA Agricultural Research Service]