Reduced-Fat Diets No More Effective Than Other Weight-Loss Diets, Meta-Analysis Suggests.

Bloomberg News (10/29, Tozzi) reports that a meta-analysis published Oct. 29 in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology “finds reducing fat isn’t any more effective for losing weight than other diets.”

The CBS News (10/29, Marcus) website reports that after analyzing data from “53 studies” including “more than 68,000 adults,” researchers found that “reduced-fat diets only led to more weight loss when compared with no diet at all.” Individuals “on low-carbohydrate diets lost substantially more weight than those who went the low-fat route.”

TIME (10/29, Sifferlin) reports that the study authors concluded that “public health guidelines should stop recommending low-fat diets for weight loss, stressing that more research is needed to find what strategy is most effective and able to be maintained.”

Also covering the story are CNBC (10/29, Ferris), Vox, HealthDay (10/29, Doheny), AFP (10/29), the Telegraph (UK) (10/29, Donnelly), and The Guardian (UK) (10/29, Boseley).

FDA Warns Hepatitis C Drugs Could Cause Severe Liver Damage To Patients With Underlying Liver Disease.

The Wall Street Journal (10/23, Loftus, Subscription Publication) reports that the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning on Thursday that AbbVie Inc.’s Viekira Pak (ombitasvir/paritaprevir/ritonavir with dasabuvir) and Technivie (ombitasvir/paritaprevir/ritonavir) may cause severe liver damage to patients who have an underlying liver disease.

The Washington Post (10/23, Dennis) reports that the FDA said it had received reports of at least 26 cases since late 2014 of patients “who either died or had to undergo liver transplantation” after taking the hepatitis C drugs, with the liver damage occurring in the first month of treatment. According to the Post, the agency “will require AbbVie to add new warnings to the safety labels of the drugs for patients who already have advanced liver disease linked to hepatitis C” and “urged doctors to closely monitor patients taking the drugs for symptoms of worsening liver disease.” Bloomberg News (10/23, Bloomfield) and the AP (10/23, Perrone) also cover the story.

Late Bedtimes May Be Linked To Weight Gain Over Time.

On its website, CBS News (10/3, Welch) reported that research published in Sleep suggests that “going to bed later during the workweek is associated with weight gain over time.” Investigators looked at “data on more than 3,300 teens and young adults recorded at different intervals over the course of about 15 years.”

HealthDay (10/3, Preidt) reported that the investigators “found that each extra hour of late bedtime was associated with a more than two-point increase in body mass index (BMI).” The data indicated that the association “between late bedtimes and BMI increase was not significantly affected by total sleep time, amount of exercise, or time spent in front of computers or televisions.”