Overview

"Epidemic" traditionally connotes the spread of a nasty contagious disease. But there’s a new epidemic on the loose—obesity—and it’s not going away.

A lot of factors contribute, but the simple truth of this epidemic is that Americans are fat and getting fatter. And the consequences are becoming more debilitating, more deadly and more expensive. Better interventions are needed to stem the tide.

Research at the Laboratory involves combing through the many hundreds of genes that combine to affect body weight. Leptin, a significant component of metabolism and body weight determination, was originally discovered at the Laboratory by Douglas Coleman, Ph.D. Research is ongoing into the many mechanisms and possible targets for intervention and therapy of weight control in the mammalian genome.

Resources

Dr. Jonathan Fanburg is a pediatrician and adolescent medicine speciallist who until recenntly had worked for over 10 years at Maine Coast Memorial Hospital in Ellsworth, Maine. 

Since coming to Maine, he has been highly involved with community health in the fields of adolescent medicine and childhood obesity.  He is also presently the President of the Maine Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Dr. Dora Anne Mills is a physician who is the director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and the Maine Department of Health and Human Services.

A Maine native, she is a graduate of Bowdoin College and the University of Vermont College of Medicine.

Dr. Mills on the diabetes "epidemic" (2:06)