By Gene Emery (Reuters Health) – Total knee replacement can usually relieve pain and improve function, but a nonsurgical regimen can also be effective in some people without posing the complication risks that can plague people who choose surgery, according to a new study. The test found that while 85 percent of patients who underwent surgery showed clinically-significant improvement after one year, so did 67 percent assigned to a combination of supervised exercise, use of insoles, pain medication, education and dietary advice. “It won’t do any harm trying the nonsurgical treatment,” chief author, Dr. Soren Skou of the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, told Reuters Health.

Researchers say injecting rats with an appetite-suppressing gene led to long-term weight loss without the side effect of reduced bone mass often found with dieting.

(Reuters Health) – Need another reason to blame weight gain on your marriage? When one spouse becomes obese, the other’s risk of obesity almost doubles, a U.S. study suggests.“Normal weight people whose spouses went from being normal weight to obese were more likely to become obese,” said Laura Cobb, who led the study as a researcher at…