Overweight and obese individuals face greater cardiovascular morbidity

Obese individuals have shorter life spans and spend significantly more time dealing with the burden of cardiovascular morbidity than do normal-weight individuals, according to a U.S. population-based study.

In a report published online Feb. 28 in JAMA Cardiology, researchers presented an analysis of pooled data from 190,672 participants and 3.2 million person-years of follow-up in 10 prospective cohort studies, including the Framingham Heart Study, the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, and the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study.

^{SandraMatic/Thinkstock}

Incident cardiovascular events occurred in 37% of overweight middle-aged men and 28% of overweight middle-aged women. In obese middle-aged men and women, those figures were 47% and 39%, respectively, and in the morbidly obese they were 65% and 48%. By comparison, incident cardiovascular events occurred in 32% of middle-aged men of normal BMI, and 22% of women.