People with severe obesity have a high probability of premature death for a variety of reasons.

But, as it turned out, a little overweight can even reduce the risk of death of patients compared to patients with normal body weight (BMI).

To such an amazing conclusion came the American scientists from the National Center for Health Statistics and the US Central Control Center. More details about this can be found in the new January issue of "JAMA".

The authors of the study note in the article that their data on the relative risk of death associated with normal, obese and obese, will help to take a fresh look at the adoption of informed clinical decisions.

Dr. Kathryn Flagal and her team worked on clarifying the relationship between the body mass index (BMI) and the overall mortality of patients. They wanted to establish an exact risk of death in people with different BMI, so that these data could be taken into account in clinical practice.

The meta-analysis included 97 studies that met their criteria and covered 2.88 million people and about 270,000 deaths. Participants in the study were from the US, EU, Mexico, India, Israel, Japan, Taiwan, China and Australia.

Scientists have broken this huge group on the body mass index: obesity 2 and 3 degrees (BMI over 35), obesity 1 degree (BMI between 30 and 35), obesity in general (BMI over 30), overweight (BMI between 25 and 30) , as well as normal body weight (BMI between 18.5 and 25). After that, the scientists calculated the probability of death of patients in each group, as well as the overall mortality.

The following results were obtained (comparison with people with normal body weight):.

• Overweight - 6% reduction in mortality.

• Obesity in general (all degrees) - 18% increase in mortality.

• Obesity 1 degree - 5% increase in mortality.

Obesity 2 and 3 degrees - 29% increased mortality.

The attention of scientists was drawn by the fact that obesity of 1 degree was associated only with a slight increase in mortality.

Even more surprising was that overweight (BMI 25-30) was associated with a lower mortality rate than people with normal weight.

In this regard, the authors of the study wrote: "Possible explanations for this phenomenon include a high probability of optimal medical care at an early stage of weight gain, as well as cardioprotective metabolic effects of a small excess of fat and the use of large metabolic reserves of the body".

medbe. en.

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