Regardless of traditional cardiovascular risk factors, such as Blood Pressure and Cholesterol Levels, if you are moderately overweight or obese you are likely to have a raised risk of developing coronary heart disease events, according to a report published in Archives of Internal Medicine (JAMA/Archives), September 10 issue.
The authors explained that almost two-thirds of American adults are overweight/obese – making it more likely that they develop not only heart disease, but other illnesses. An overweight/obese person has a significantly higher risk of dying early, compared to a person who is not overweight/obese.
The authors wrote “Because of the high prevalence of overweight and the expected future increases, it is essential to gain precise insight into the consequences of overweight for health and into the metabolic pathways that link the two.”
Rik P. Bogers, Ph.D., Centre for Prevention and Health Services Research, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands, and team looked at the combined data from 21 studies on overweight/obesity and heart disease involving 302,296 people.
During the studies 18,000 people experienced a heart event and/or died. After taking into account such variables as age, physical activity, sex and smoking habits, the researchers found that people who are moderately overweight have a 32% higher risk of heart disease compared to people who are of normal weight. For an obese person, they write, the risk is 81% higher.
They then adjusted the figures for blood pressure and levels of cholesterol. Those who were overweight and had normal blood pressure and cholesterol levels were still 17% more likely to experience heart disease, while obese people with normal blood pressure and cholesterol readings had a 49% raised risk, compared to people of normal weight.
The researchers concluded “Hence, the present study indicates that adverse effects of overweight on blood pressure and cholesterol levels could account for about 45 percent of the increased risk of coronary heart disease, and that there is still a significantly increased risk of coronary heart disease that is independent of these effects. This implies that, even under the theoretical scenario that optimal treatment would be available against hypertension and hypercholesterolemia in overweight persons, they would still have an elevated risk of coronary heart disease.”
Other factors that might be contributing to the higher heart disease risk for overweight/obese people could be constant low-grade inflammation, blood vessel function problems, an imbalance in blood chemicals which may lead to more clotting, they wrote.
“Association of Overweight With Increased Risk of Coronary Heart Disease Partly Independent of Blood Pressure and Cholesterol Levels – A Meta-analysis of 21 Cohort Studies Including More Than 300 000 Persons”
Rik P. Bogers, PhD; Wanda J. E. Bemelmans, PhD; Rudolf T. Hoogenveen, MSc; Hendriek C. Boshuizen, PhD; Mark Woodward, PhD; Paul Knekt, PhD; Rob M. van Dam, PhD; Frank B. Hu, MD, PhD; Tommy L. S. Visscher, PhD; Alessandro Menotti, MD, PhD; Roland J. Thorpe Jr, PhD; Konrad Jamrozik, DPhil; Susanna Calling, MD, PhD; Bjorn Heine Strand, PhD; Martin J. Shipley, MSc; for the BMI-CHD Collaboration Investigators
Arch Intern Med. 2007;167:1720-1728.
Written by: Christian Nordqvist