Chronic Disease Risk

Future Chronic Disease Risk Goes Beyond BMI

By Crystal Phend, Senior Staff Writer, MedPage Today Published: February 01, 2010 Reviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Dorothy Caputo, MA, RN, BC-ADM, CDE, Nurse Planner   Copy the code below to embed audio on your website or blog: Interview with: Sarah Appleton, Postgraduate student, University of Adelaide, Australia When it comes to predicting chronic disease, body mass index doesn't tell the whole story, according to a population-based study that found elevated risk with obesity and other metabolic risk factors independently. Metabolically-healthy obese people tended toward being at least twice as likely to develop multiple metabolic risk factors and diabetes as healthy, normal weight individuals over the subsequent 3.5 years of a study led by Sarah Appleton, a postgraduate student at the University of Adelaide, Australia. However, normal weight individuals with metabolic risk factors -- a group the researchers called "metabolically obese" -- were at greater risk, she told attendees at the International Congress on Abdominal Obesity in Hong Kong, a conference sponsored by the International Chair on Cardiometabolic Risk.