In October, the Joint Scientific Meeting of the Australian & New Zealand Obesity Society, the Obesity Surgery Society of Australia & New Zealand and the Asia Oceania Association for the Study of Obesity was held in Adelaide.

Dr Alison Yaxley is a member of the supervisory panel for Mr Tom Walsh, a podiatrist and PhD candidate, along with Professor Michael Shanahan (primary) and Dr Angela Evans.

Tom’s work is investigating associations between foot pain and obesity and as part of his PhD studies he investigated the change in foot pain in bariatric surgery patients. While foot pain is often assumed to result from mechanical load in overweight and obese individuals new evidence points to inflammatory markers derived from adipose tissue as a possible cause. Tom investigated the association between foot pain and fat mass after bariatric surgery and found evidence that fat mass is associated with increased foot pain thus confirming that this pain may be mediated by metabolic rather than mechanical factors in this group.

Tom presented this work at the recent Joint Scientific meeting and was awarded a Best Paper award in the Integrated Health category. Congratulations to Tom on all his hard work!