6A the university daily kansan
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thursday, april 15.2004
news
Study shows increasing obesity among KU students
By Becca Evanhoe
bevanhoe@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
A University of Kansas study is showing that obesity in KU students is occurring more frequently. Those students may be at risk for type 2 diabetes, the most common form. The final goal of the study is to find out if type 2 diabetes is on the rise, too.
"We've seen the numbers of young people with type 2 diabetes go up, which is scary," said Angela Kempf, a graduate student who works on the study, which is done through Watkins Memorial Health Center.
Funded by the American Heart Association, the Monitoring University Students Tackling Diabetes and Obesity.
or MUST-DO, study is looking at the diet and exercise patterns that lead to obesity in college students.
Because obesity is linked to type 2 diabetes, where the body's insulin doesn't effectively break down sugar, MUST-DO also looks at the factors that might cause type 2 diabetes.
Preliminary results show that 20 percent of the participants tested so far are obese, based on Body Mass Index, or BMI, which indicates weight status in adults by measuring weight for height.
"The exact causes of obesity are unknown, but studies suggest that lifestyle factors such as diet and physical activity patterns may play an important role," said Terry Huang, principal investigator for the study.
"We are in the process of understanding the mechanisms underlying these links."
According to the Center for Disease Control, or CDC, up to 80 percent of youth diagnosed with type 2 diabetes are overweight.
The CDC Web site also states that "as the U.S. population becomes increasingly overweight, researchers expect type 2 diabetes to appear more frequently in younger, pre-pubescent children."
Myra Strother, associate director of Watkins and practicing physician, expressed her concern for college students following the national obesity trend.
"Definitely, we've seen a trend of more students struggling with being overweight and obesity, as is the rest of the United States,"
"I think its one of the most serious health risks that Americans have, and its progressing at very rapid pace, more like an epidemic than a health issue."
she said.
The study's participants are volunteer KU students ages 18 through 24. The volunteers spend three hours with Kempf, getting measured for BMI and filling out a series of five surveys that cover topics such as birth weight, physical activity, diet history and the frequency of eating certain foods. The longest survey is the Diet History Questionnaire — 36 pages.
Students in the study also have their blood taken twice to test their body's ability to process glucose and other factors such as cholesterol levels. The first blood test, done after the student fasts for at least eight
hours, measures fasting glucose. Fasting glucose is the base level of glucose your body maintains after you haven't eaten for a while.
The student then drinks an orange-flavored, carbonated glucose drink. A second blood test is then taken two hours later to measure glucose tolerance, which is how well your body can processes glucose.
Impaired fasting glucose or impaired glucose tolerance, also known as glucose intolerance, are a sign of pre-diabetes, according to the CDC.
One risk factor of type 2 diabetes stems from obesity, which leads to overuse of the pancreas, the organ that produces the body's insulin to break down sugar. In an obese person, the body's fat tissue doesn't respond as well to insulin, called insulin
resistance.
"Basically, the pancreas is tired out," said Strother.
The study has tested 120 students so far and is about halfway to its goal of testing 300 students by June 2005.
Strother said the rising trend of obesity in college students spurred Watkins to an increased wellness initiative for the KU campus. Watkins is starting a walking program and serving lower-fat, healthier foods in residence halls and vending machines - anything to get people moving and walking, she said.
"All these diets may help with initial weight loss, but what you've got to go to is a healthier diet and exercise," she said.
Annie Bernethv/Kansan
— Edited by Ashley Arnold
Natalie Patrick, Lenexa senior, took a trip to El Salvador over spring break to observe the country's elections and judge how fair they were. She and other members of her group presented their findings to Rep. Dennis Moore on April 8.
Student focused on helping globally
By Samia Khan
skhan@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Natalie Patrick enjoyed a tropical climate for her spring break, but she didn't relax on beaches in South Padre or work on her tan in Cancun.
Instead, the Lenexa senior spent her spring break in El Salvador observing the country's elections.
She worked with an international observation committee of more than 1,000 people and traveled with a delegation of 110 people.
The trip was organized through a solidarity organization called SHARE. The information Patrick and the other delegates gathered was used to make recommendations to El Salvadorian officials.
Last week Patrick presented her experience to Congressman Dennis Moore.
But Moore was interested in the coercive role U.S. politicians took in the elections, she said.
Patrick said the situation now was better than it had been in past elections, but far from fair.
She and four other solidarity workers had 30 minutes with the congressman, which was not enough time to get much feedback, she said.
Since El Salvador's civil war ended in 1992, the country has struggled to establish free and fair elections.
Death squad agents and men with rifles weren't standing at the booths like they used to, but the election process was tainted by chaos, misinformation and fear tactics.
She said corporations threatened to move jobs if the opposition won and U.S. politicians made threats of deportations and sanctions that they had no power to enforce.
The situation is better than the mass murders that took place 12 years ago, she said, but the process is far from democratic and the government continues to neglect the people.
"The government is not shooting their people any more, but
they're still letting them starve to death," she said.
Patrick said she was struck by the hope and concern the El Salvadorian people had for their nation's politics. She said even young children knew about the elections and the ruling party.
"It's hard to understand, but they've never been willing to give up." she said.
Erik Schnabel is a development director with SHARE's San Francisco office and helped coordinate a group in Patrick's delegation.
He said the delegation was diverse in terms of ages and backgrounds, but they all shared the goal of a free and fair elections process.
Patrick took her commitment to the delegation and the issues of El Salvador seriously, he said.
Patrick has been involved in international politics since her freshman year of high school, when she attended a magnet school geared toward international studies.
Since then she has been involved in an international relations council in the Kansas City area.
She studied in Mexico last summer and is involved with the Model United Nations Club at Johnson County Community College.
"International politics has always been my gig," she said.
Some of Patrick's most direct experiences with international communities have been while hosting exchange students.
In high school, her family hosted two Japanese students, two Chinese students and one friend from El Salvador.
At her college residence, Patrick has hosted two Germans and two Japanese students.
Patrick had been to El Salvador once before her spring break trip.
In the summer of 2000, she traveled with a women's delegation to El Salvador to gather information on the condition of women after the civil war.
Patrick's sister went on both trips to El Salvador.
Patrick and her sister were the only people to travel from the Midwest.
Julia Patrick, Lenexa junior, said the spring break trip helped her sister look beyond school and consider getting involved with more international work instead of going straight to graduate school.
Patrick said the trip had empowered her to refocus her priorities. She no longer wants to study abroad in Spain.
"That's where you go for backpacking," she said. "I need to find a place that is more important for me and where I will learn the most."
Sheena Shippee, Patrick's longtime friend, said she has seen Patrick's interest in learning
about Latin American politics deepen, especially after the trips to El Salvador.
"Sometimes I'm in awe of all the things she is learning and researching." Shippee, Shawnee junior, said.
Natalie Patrick said she wanted to learn more by spending more time in El Salvador and wished the El Salvadorian people could one day decide their own politics.
International missions like the her spring break trip are one of the best ways to help the situation, she said.
"Just walking with them can do so much in protecting them," she said.
Research center moving to Missouri
By Bill Cross
bcross@kansan.com
Kansas staff writer
A medical facility that contributes to antibiotics, birth control and herbal medicine is leaving the University of Kansas Medical Center this summer.
The Fungal Genetics Stock Center, which grows and distributes over 10,000 different strains of fungus for medical, industrial and genetic research, is relocating to the University of Missouri at Kansas City on July 1. The center has been at the KU Medical Center since 1985.
John Kinsey, director of the stock center, said KU Medical Center will not suffer as a result of the center's move, because fungal research is not a priority for the medical center.
Kinsey said he had been the only researcher using filamentous fungi at the medical center. He did not renew his research grant because he intended to retire after transfer of the stock center.
Edited by Abby Mills
Kevin McCluskey, curator of the stock center, said the medical center may notice a slight decrease in publicity and funding after the move. He said the stock center had garnered international recognition for medical center. The stock center supplies fungus samples for research to 57 countries.
Tom Volk, biology professor at the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse, said popular antibiotics, such as penicillin, are derived from fungus spores. Many researchers who receive supplies from the stock center are seeking to create new antibiotics to combat evolved viruses that are resistant to old antibiotics such as penicillin, McCluskey said.
Volk, who maintains an extensive fungus Web site, tomvolkfungi.net, said fungi also produce the steroids used in many birth control pills. He said the fungus aspergillus terreus produced the key ingredient in Mevacor, an important cholesterol-fighting drug.
Herbal remedies popular in the Far East are also fueled by fungus, Volk said.
But fungi can be dangerous. Kinsey said fungal infections are more difficult to treat than bacterial infections. Because fungi, like humans, are comprised of cells, it is difficult to create drugs that kill fungal cells and leave human body cells alone. Kinsey said most fungus samples were used to find cures for fungal diseases such as athlete's foot and valley fever, a lung infection causing pneumonia-like symptoms.
"Western medicine is just starting to examine these eastern remedies and finding that they probably do really work," he said.
Humans aren't the only targets of fungus. Kinsey, who works with fungal genetics, said any plant or animal could be afflicted by a fungal infection.
"Fungal infections of plants lead to billions of dollars in crop losses each year," he said.
Research on how to make good fungus and how to kill bad fungus, as well as Kinsey's research on mapping fungus genes, is supported by the stock center.
The move and the change in management may create some ripples, Kinsey said, but the effectiveness of the stock center as a research tool will not change.
McCluskey, who will remain curator at the center when it moves to UMKC, said humans at the stock center are vastly outnumbered.
"The FGSC holds about 45,000 fungal isolates and hundreds of thousands of clones and has three people." he said.
The 15,000 to one ratio doesn't bother McCluskey.
"The FGSC has impacted research around the world in a variety of systems — industrial, medical and in plant pathology — but has very little impact at KUMC," he said.
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