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Body mass index (BMI) may not independently increase mortality compared to other risk factors in adults, according to a new study, emphasizing the need to include other factors. The prevalence of overweight and obesity has increased dramatically over the past 25 years, and it is well established that elevated BMI can contribute to a number of cardio-metabolic conditions. However, studies analyzing the association between BMI and all-cause mortality have been inconsistent.
To understand, a team from Rutgers University in the US retrospectively studied data from 554,332 US adults. Of these, about 35 percent had a BMI between 25 and 30, which is generally defined as overweight, and 27.2 percent had a BMI greater than or equal to 30, which is generally defined as obese. goes.
Over a median follow-up of nine years and a maximum follow-up of 20 years, the researchers observed 75,807 deaths. The risk of death from all causes was similar across a wide range of BMI categories. For older adults, there was no significant increase in mortality for any BMI between 22.5 and 34.9, and among younger adults, there was no significant increase in mortality for any BMI between 22.5 and 27.4.
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Overall, for adults with a BMI of 30 or greater, their weight increased the risk of death by 21 percent to 108 percent. The patterns observed in the overall population remained largely similar across males and females and across different races and ethnicities.
In the paper published in the open-access journal PLOS One, the researchers said that further studies involving weight history, body composition and morbidity outcomes are needed to fully characterize BMI-mortality associations. They noted that BMI in the overweight range was not generally associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality.
“Our study highlights growing objections to using BMI alone to drive clinical decisions. There was no apparent increase in all-cause mortality across the range of traditionally normal and overweight BMI categories.” However, this does not mean that morbidity is similar in all these BMI ranges. Future studies will need to assess the incidence of cardio-metabolic morbidity,” he added.
