Dolores Corella

Adopting a healthy diet at age 45 can add between two and three years to life expectancy in men, and between 1.5 and 2.3 years in women, according to a study based on data from more than 103,000 people in the United Kingdom. The positive impact is greater for men who follow a diabetes risk reduction diet (DRRD) and for women who follow a Mediterranean-style diet (AMED), says the article published in Science Advances.

About one in 5,000 people have a genetic variant in the SMIM1 gene that results in a particular type of blood type called Vel negative. An international team of researchers now describes the same variant as being associated with a predisposition to obesity, metabolic disturbances and lower resting energy expenditure. Women studied with the variant weigh, on average, 4.6 kg more, while in men the difference is about 2.4 kg. The results are published in the journal Med, published by the Cell group. 

A review of studies of more than 700,000 women has estimated that those who follow a Mediterranean diet faithfully have about a 25% lower risk of cardiovascular disease and death. This effect is greater than had been found in other studies, many of which included a majority of men and did not differentiate results by sex. According to the authors, the study underscores the need for this type of targeted analysis. The results are published in the journal Heart.

A study has associated the consumption of a high-fat diet in pregnant primates with alterations in the development of immune cells in the bone marrow of the foetuses. The results are published in the journal Stem Cell Reports.