Anna MalnuttParents who experience miscarriage –

An international commission made the case for focusing on body fat quantity and the illnesses people experience.Obesity should be assessed in a way that goes beyond the standard measure of body mass index, or B.M.I., according to a new definition of the condition released by an international commission.Its report, published Tuesday in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal, makes the case for focusing on how much body fat and what medical complications the person has, not just their weight.If the guidelines are widely adopted, they could change doctors’ perceptions of who needs to be treated for obesity. They could also affect the use of prescription drugs that treat obesity, like Wegovy and Zepbound. The new definition of obesity was endorsed by 76 organizations around the world.The commission proposed that instead of continuing the current use of B.M.I. — as a way to define obesity — it should be a screening tool to determine who should be tested for excess body fat.The commission said that people who had a B.M.I. over 25 and too much fat, but who are otherwise healthy, should pretty much be left alone. They should be monitored and counseled not to gain any more weight and possibly to lose some.Their condition would be called pre-clinical obesity.Other people with any of the 18 medical conditions caused by obesity — 13 for children and adolescents — require medical treatment to improve their health and prevent serious injuries to organs. The conditions include breathlessness, heart failure, hip or knee pain, metabolic abnormalities and poorly functioning organs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

The agency issued designs for front-of-package lists that food companies would be required to include.The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday proposed requiring new nutrition labels on the front of food and beverage products, a long-awaited move aimed at changing eating habits associated with soaring rates of obesity and diet-related illness that are responsible for a million deaths each year.The new label, a small black-and-white box similar to the Nutrition Facts box on the back of packaged goods, is designed to help consumers quickly understand which products contain excessive amounts of sugar, salt and saturated fat. Those three nutrients are implicated in the nation’s skyrocketing rates of Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure.More than 60 percent of American adults suffer from those three chronic illnesses, which are estimated to account for $4.5 trillion in annual health care costs, according to the F.D.A.In contrast to the mandatory back-of-package Nutrition Facts panels, which list a product’s ingredients, calorie count and serving size, the front-of-package labels would rank the contents of sugar, fat and salt as high, medium or low to indicate whether the amounts exceed or fall short of the recommended daily values set by the F.D.A.“Nearly everyone knows or cares for someone with a chronic disease that is due, in part, to the food we eat,” Dr. Robert Califf, the commissioner of the F.D.A., said in a statement. “It is time we make it easier for consumers to glance, grab and go.”The proposal follows three years of research by agency scientists, who considered the front-of-package labels used by other countries. After reviewing studies on the effectiveness of those labels, the F.D.A. tested prospective designs with focus groups to determine whether the information they conveyed was easy to comprehend.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Analysis found that more than 64,000 Palestinians may have been killed by traumatic injury in the first nine months of the war.Deaths from bombs and other traumatic injuries during the first nine months of the war in Gaza may have been underestimated by more than 40 percent, according to a new analysis published in The Lancet.The peer-reviewed statistical analysis, led by epidemiologists at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, used modeling in an effort to provide an objective third-party estimate of casualties. The United Nations has relied on the figure from the Hamas-led Ministry of Health, which it says has been largely accurate, but which Israel criticizes as inflated.But the new analysis suggests the Hamas health ministry tally is a significant undercount. The researchers concluded that the death toll from Israel’s aerial bombardment and military ground operation in Gaza between October 2023 and the end of June 2024 was about 64,300, rather than the 37,900 reported by the Palestinian Ministry of Health.The estimate in the analysis corresponds to 2.9 percent of Gaza’s prewar population having been killed by traumatic injury, or one in 35 inhabitants. The analysis did not account for other war-related casualties such as deaths from malnutrition, water-borne illness or the breakdown of the health system as the conflict progressed.The study found that 59 percent of the dead were women, children and people over the age of 65. It did not establish what share of the reported dead were combatants.Mike Spagat, an expert on calculating casualties of war who was not involved in this research, said the new analysis convinced him that Gaza casualties were underestimated.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

The second of two analyses intended to shape the upcoming U.S. Dietary Guidelines questions alcohol’s overall benefits.Among both men and women, drinking just one alcoholic beverage a day increases the risk of liver cirrhosis, esophageal cancer, oral cancer and various types of injuries, according to a federal analysis of alcohol’s health effects issued on Tuesday.Women face a higher risk of developing liver cancer at this level of drinking, but a lower risk of diabetes. And while one alcoholic drink daily also reduces the likelihood of strokes caused by blood clots among both men and women, the report found, even occasional heavy drinking negates the benefits.The report, prepared by an outside scientific review panel under the auspices of the Department of Health and Human Services, is one of two competing assessments that will be used to shape the influential U.S. Dietary Guidelines, which are to be updated this year.The government has for several decades recommended a limit of two standard alcoholic drinks per day for men and one for women.In December, a review of the data by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine supported this advice, finding that moderate drinking was linked to fewer heart attack and stroke deaths, and fewer deaths overall, compared with no drinking.But some experts fear that the harms of moderate drinking have been understated, particularly the risk of cancer, which is the leading cause of death among people under 85, according to the American Cancer Society.In 2020, the last time the dietary guidelines came up for review, scientific advisers suggested lowering the recommendation to one drink daily for both men and women. That advice did not appear in the final guidelines.The analysis from the National Academies tied moderate drinking in women to a small but significant increase in breast cancer, but said there was insufficient evidence to tie alcohol to other cancers.This month, however, the U.S. Surgeon General, citing mounting scientific evidence, called for labeling alcohol with cancer warnings similar to those that appear on cigarettes. The report issued on Tuesday found that the increased cancer risk comes with any amount of alcohol consumption and rises with higher levels of drinking.Drinking is linked to a higher risk of death for seven types of cancer, including breast cancer, colorectal cancer, liver cancer as well as cancers of the oral cavity, pharynx and larynx and esophagus.Men and women are both vulnerable to these health harms, but women are much more likely to develop a cancer linked to drinking, the report said.“Among the U.S. population, the risk of dying from alcohol use begins at low levels of average use,” the report said. “Higher levels of alcohol consumption are linked with progressively higher mortality risk.”Those who consume more than seven drinks per week have a one in 1,000 risk of dying from a condition related to alcohol. The risk increases to one in 100 if consumption is more than nine drinks a week.This article will be updated.

The Princess of Wales has made a personal visit to thank staff and support patients at the hospital where she was treated for cancer.

All 50-74-year-olds in England will now receive a home-testing kit for bowel cancer every two years.

Getty ImagesThere has been a rise in the proportion of women seeking abortions despite using “natural” methods to prevent pregnancy, like fertility tracking apps, a study in England and Wales suggests.

BBCNearly 400,000 private prescriptions for ADHD medication were issued last year as patients sought to bypass lengthy NHS waiting lists, with people spending millions of pounds on treatment.

Deepali Misra-SharpThis is the fifth feature in a six-part series that is looking at how AI is changing medical research and treatments.