Obese Applicants More Often Denied Entry to Graduate Schools: Study

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
Applicants of any size fared equally in phone interviews, but bias crept in at face-to-face meetings

By Robert Preidt

HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, July 24 (HealthDay News) -- Add higher education to the list of things obese people might lose out on due to discrimination. A new study finds that being overweight may lower your odds of getting into graduate school.

"The success rate for people who had had no interview or a phone interview was pretty much equal," study author Jacob Burmeister, himself a Ph.D. candidate at Bowling Green State University, said in a university news release.

"But when in-person interviews were involved, there was quite a bit of difference, even when applicants started out on equal footing with their grades, test scores and letters of recommendation," he added.

Researchers looked at 97 applicants to psychology graduate programs at U.S. universities. The students in the study told the researchers about their application experiences and whether or not they received an offer of admission. The students included details such as whether they had been interviewed in person or over the telephone.

According to Burmeister's team, students who were relatively overweight or obese were less likely to be offered admission after an in-person interview.

This weight bias was stronger for female applicants, according to the study, which was published recently in the journal Obesity.

"When we looked at that we could see a clear relation between their weight and offers of admission for those applicants who had had an in-person interview," Burmeister said.

The researchers weren't surprised by their findings, according to Burmeister.

"We know that these kinds of biases are pretty common and even [perceived to be] somewhat acceptable compared to other biases, and there's not much legally forbidding it," he said.

"We might expect psychology faculty to be more aware of these types of biases. Thus, the level of bias found in this study could be a conservative estimate of the level of bias in the graduate admissions process in other fields," Burmeister added.

Gut Bugs May Hold Key to Weight Control, Mouse Study Suggests

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
Findings hint that obese people might benefit from transfer of stomach bacteria of thinner people

By Randy Dotinga

HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Sept. 5 (HealthDay News) -- The bacteria living in your digestive system may be the last thing on your mind, but a new study in mice raises the prospect that obese people might get benefits through the transfer of a thinner person's gut germs.

The research is preliminary, and there are a variety of obstacles, including as-yet-unknown side effects in people, cost and the "ick" factor. "Fecal transplants" are now used to treat people with an intestinal disorder, and they're not for the faint of heart (or stomach).

Still, the findings from researchers at the University of Colorado reveal the potential promise of the approach.

In the future, there may be "a way to swap bacteria that's not gross," said Justin Sonnenburg, an assistant professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine. "There may even someday be a pill you could take."

At issue are the germs that live within your body and help you digest food, among other things. The bacteria live in communities, and "there's a huge, increasing interest in understanding these communities at a fundamental level," Sonnenburg said. "That way, we can prevent diseases they're associated with."

The new study looked at what might happen if germs from a thinner person were transferred into an obese person.

They took fecal bacteria from four sets of adult, female, human twins in which one sister was obese (a step above simply being overweight), and then transplanted the germs into mice. They then fed the mice various diets, including some meant to represent the typical unhealthy American diet.

"[The results] show that mice that get microbes from obese individuals gain more weight than those that get microbes from lean individuals," said study co-author Rob Knight, an associate professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "In other words, the weight gain can be transmitted from humans to mice by transferring their microbes."

There's another twist: Mice like to eat each other's feces, so they naturally transferred fecal bacteria to each other. The mice with germs from the obese twins appeared to be affected by their counterparts with germs from thinner twins and actually gained less weight.

But the opposite wasn't the case. And, the researchers found, a typical high-fat, American-style diet seemed to eliminate the benefits for the obese-twin mice of eating the feces of their thinner twin counterparts.

What does this all mean? It's possible to disrupt weight gain by transferring gut bacteria and to use mice to understand more about the germs inside humans, Knight said. Results of animal studies, however, often don't translate to humans.

The study, which appears in the Sept. 6 issue of the journal Science, was funded in part by the food company Kraft, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America.

Gut Bugs May Hold Key to Weight Control, Mouse Study Suggests

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
Findings hint that obese people might benefit from transfer of stomach bacteria of thinner people

By Randy Dotinga

HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Sept. 5 (HealthDay News) -- The bacteria living in your digestive system may be the last thing on your mind, but a new study in mice raises the prospect that obese people might get benefits through the transfer of a thinner person's gut germs.

The research is preliminary, and there are a variety of obstacles, including as-yet-unknown side effects in people, cost and the "ick" factor. "Fecal transplants" are now used to treat people with an intestinal disorder, and they're not for the faint of heart (or stomach).

Still, the findings from researchers at the University of Colorado reveal the potential promise of the approach.

In the future, there may be "a way to swap bacteria that's not gross," said Justin Sonnenburg, an assistant professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine. "There may even someday be a pill you could take."

At issue are the germs that live within your body and help you digest food, among other things. The bacteria live in communities, and "there's a huge, increasing interest in understanding these communities at a fundamental level," Sonnenburg said. "That way, we can prevent diseases they're associated with."

The new study looked at what might happen if germs from a thinner person were transferred into an obese person.

They took fecal bacteria from four sets of adult, female, human twins in which one sister was obese (a step above simply being overweight), and then transplanted the germs into mice. They then fed the mice various diets, including some meant to represent the typical unhealthy American diet.

"[The results] show that mice that get microbes from obese individuals gain more weight than those that get microbes from lean individuals," said study co-author Rob Knight, an associate professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "In other words, the weight gain can be transmitted from humans to mice by transferring their microbes."

There's another twist: Mice like to eat each other's feces, so they naturally transferred fecal bacteria to each other. The mice with germs from the obese twins appeared to be affected by their counterparts with germs from thinner twins and actually gained less weight.

But the opposite wasn't the case. And, the researchers found, a typical high-fat, American-style diet seemed to eliminate the benefits for the obese-twin mice of eating the feces of their thinner twin counterparts.

What does this all mean? It's possible to disrupt weight gain by transferring gut bacteria and to use mice to understand more about the germs inside humans, Knight said. Results of animal studies, however, often don't translate to humans.

The study, which appears in the Sept. 6 issue of the journal Science, was funded in part by the food company Kraft, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America.