The warning bells for obesity may have been ringing in the West for a while now, but they are quickly moving to the developing world. The Middle East and North Africa have one of the fastest growing rates of obesity in the world. While the epidemic is widespread between men, women and children, it would appear that women are disproportionately affected, with some countries in the region showing double the rate of obesity in women than in men.

The reasons for this rapid increase are different from one country to the other, but the shift to a more “Western” diet, coupled with cultural norms that preclude women from engaging in exercise in public and promotes sedentary lifestyles. In Saudi Arabia, for example, a mere 2% of women take exercise. Researchers argue that governments should be doing more to promote healthy lifestyles and prevent and decrease obesity, which can lead to various chronic diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure. This would be especially relevant to Gulf states where these chronic diseases are widespread.

And while still in the Gulf region, researchers working on understanding the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV), which has had many people worried especially with Hajj season approach, found that the transmission of the virus may be more complicated than previously thought.

Is it from bats? Or camels? Or something completely different? While we are not any closer to knowing the host or source of the virus, researchers have found various variations when analysing the virus genomes isolated from 21 patients from Saudi Arabia. These variations are too big to be the result of replication errors, says the researchers, and could probably involve multiple animal to human infections.

Finally, to end on a slightly more positive tone, researchers have managed to come up with an algorithm that may help screen for cancers. DNA is wrapped around proteins called histones. Sometimes, enzymes may modify histones causing the cell to stop producing certain proteins that can silence cancer. Researchers from Saudi Arabia and France came up with a model that can detect these changes effectively, which could be useful in designing anticancer drugs to undo these cancerous changes.

Beyond the hood

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will release its fifth assignment and, to no one’s surprise, will stress again there is a 95% probability that human activities are responsible for climate change. This is an increase from the fourth assessment’s 90% – but just reiterates what we already know. The past three decades have seen the Earth’s surface increasingly warmer than anytime before.

“Observations of changes in the climate system are based on multiple lines of independent evidence. Our assessment of the science finds that the atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amount of snow and ice has diminished, the global mean sea level has risen and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased,” said Qin Dahe, co-chair of IPCC Working Group I in a press release.

In a Nature editorial for a special focusing on the IPCC, the writers argue that, while the IPCC has done a tremendous job so far, it may be time to retire the mega assessments and switch to smaller, faster reports that address the direct issues that can help policymakers. The five year wait between each assessment may not be the best model going forward, they argue, since by the time the reports are out they are already old news.

Whatever the model chosen going forward, we can be sure of one thing: This is the start of a new round of loud bickering between politicians who will, most probably, again ignore the science.