One phrase that often pops up in medical research is the phrase, "is associated with". Eating quickly is associated with obesity, diabetes is associated with increased risk of heart attack, high triglyceride levels are associated with high consumption of dietary fructose, etc.
Taken at face value, association means... nothing. Only that the two items are often seen at the same time. It could be coincidence, such as two students in the same grade getting out of school at the same time. The two students might be friends, enemies, frenemies... or completely unaware of each other. Just as someone would need to look further to find out whether the students were friends, researchers need to look further to see whether eating quickly causes obesity, or why people with diabetes may be more likely to get heart attacks. What an "association" article does is point out that we often see these two medical issues in the same person, at the same time -- and in doing so, points out a direction for further research. Eventually, researchers may find a relationship between the two conditions (for example, one causes the other -- or both are caused by a third condition). Or they may find out that the two conditions are completely unrelated.
The article simply asks the question in a logical manner.
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