Death
risk doubles for obese men
London, July 13, 2010:
Obese men face double the risk of dying
prematurely, says a study.
Danish researchers tracked more than
5,000 military conscripts starting at the age of 20 up to the age of
80. They found that at any given age, an obese man was twice as likely
to die than one who was not obese and that obesity at the age of 20
had a constant effect on death up to 60 years later.
"As the obesity epidemic is still
progressing rapidly, especially among children and adolescents, it is
important to find out if obesity in early adulthood has lifelong
mortality effects," said the study leader Esther Zimmermann.
Zimmerman is a researcher at the
Institute of Preventive Medicine, Copenhagen University Hospital and
the Institute of Biomedical Sciences at University of Copenhagen in
Denmark.
"Previous studies have investigated
obesity and mortality in middle-aged populations, which only tell us
about the detrimental effects of obesity in middle age," said
Zimmerman.
"Our study sheds light on how obesity at
age 20 affects obesity throughout adult life. It is the first study
with such a long follow-up time and thus the first study to
investigate the lifelong effect," added Zimmerman.
The study was presented Tuesday at the
International Congress on Obesity in Stockholm.
Researchers compared mortality in a
sample of 1,930 obese male military conscripts with that in a random
sample of 3,601 non-obese male conscripts, said a Copenhagen
University Hospital release.
Body mass index (BMI), a height to weight
ratio, was measured at the average ages of 20, 35 and 46 years, and
the researchers investigated that in relation to death in the next
follow-up period.
A total of 1,191 men had died during the
follow-up period of up to 60 years. The results were adjusted to
eliminate any influence on the findings from year of birth, education
and smoking.
"At age 70 years, 70 percent of the men
in the comparison group and 50 percent of those in the obese group
were still alive and we estimated that from middle age, the obese were
likely to die eight years earlier than those in the comparison
group," Zimmermann said.
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