Key takeaways:
- Girls with giant waist circumference had a higher danger for demise throughout all BMI classes.
- Researchers highlighted the inexpensiveness and ease of measuring waist circumference.
Menopausal girls with bigger waist circumference had a higher danger for demise no matter their BMI class, in keeping with a research printed in Annals of Inner Drugs.
The findings align with prior analyses that recommend waist circumference could also be a higher indicator for obesity-related well being outcomes, like mortality, vs. BMI alone.
Knowledge derived from: Aragaki AK, et al. Ann Intern Med. 2025;doi:10.7326/ANNALS-24-00713.
“The important thing takeaway for clinicians is that BMI alone will not be adequate for assessing obesity-related well being dangers. Our findings assist incorporating BMI-specific WC thresholds into routine care to raised determine high-risk sufferers — particularly those that could seem low-risk based mostly on BMI alone,” Aaron Okay. Aragaki, MS, from the Fred Hutchinson Most cancers Middle, instructed Healio.
In response to Aragaki and colleagues, waist circumference is “a easy, cheap methodology to evaluate visceral adiposity and correlates properly with visceral fats as assessed by imaging, however it’s not usually measured for affected person care.”
“Waist circumference could be particularly precious for staging of weight problems danger if BMI-specific thresholds had been obtainable,” they wrote, although “whether or not additional stratifying BMI classes by BMI-specific waist circumference thresholds improves mortality danger prediction over BMI classes alone is unsure.”
The researchers aimed to fill this information hole by assessing many years’ price of information from 139,213 postmenopausal girls aged 50 to 79 years within the Girls’s Well being Initiative.
Examine contributors had been divided into three cohorts, which included the:
- growth cohort (67,774 contributors);
- validation cohort 1 (48,335 contributors with a excessive prevalence of chubby or weight problems); and
- validation cohort 2 (23,104 contributors from various, geographically separate facilities).
BMI classes included regular weight, chubby and weight problems lessons 1, 2 and three.
Aragaki and colleagues utilized three fashions to foretell mortality: a mortality mannequin, the mortality plus a BMI mannequin, and the mortality mannequin plus the BMI mannequin plus BMI-specific waist circumference thresholds.
Validation cohort 1 had a considerably higher prevalence of enormous waist circumference (21.9%) in contrast with validation cohort 2 (18.2%) in keeping with BMI-specific waist thresholds.
There have been 69,297 deaths among the many total cohort over a median 24 years of observe up.
The researchers reported that girls with regular (HR = 1.17; 95% CI, 1.12-1.21) or chubby (HR = 1.19; 95% CI, 1.15 to 1.24) BMI however giant waist circumference had a danger for demise much like these with obesity-1 however regular waist circumference (HR = 1.12; 95% CI, 1.08-1.16) vs. girls with regular BMI and regular waist circumference.
In addition they famous the mortality danger tied to weight problems and huge waist circumference (HR = 1.45; 95% CI, 1.35-1.55) was much like that related to obesity-3 and regular waist circumference (HR = 1.4; 95% CI, 1.28-1.54).
Aragaki and colleagues acknowledged a number of research limitations, together with the exclusion of males and youthful girls, and lack of investigation into cause-specific mortality.
Aragaki instructed Healio the twin method of utilizing BMI and waist circumference “permits for extra personalised care.”
“For instance, a affected person with regular physique weight however a big waist circumference could profit from extra aggressive life-style interventions,” he stated. “Why wait until they develop a comorbid situation earlier than making life-style modifications? Early identification of visceral adiposity permits clinicians to intervene when prevention is extra possible attainable.”
For sufferers with obesity-1, Aragaki stated that waist circumference evaluation “may also help inform selections about initiating anti-obesity drugs, which might price over $1,000 per thirty days.”
In a associated editorial, Christina C. Wee, MD, MPH, senior deputy editor at Annals of Inner Drugs, and colleagues stated that BMI options like waist circumference “should be examined in therapeutic trials to see whether or not they determine sufferers most probably to learn from intervention.”
“With the enlargement of efficient weight problems therapy choices, it’s time we match our advances in therapeutics with enhancements in prognosis and danger evaluation,” they wrote.
References:
For extra info:
Aaron Okay. Aragaki, MS, might be reached at primarycare@healio.com.
