New research published Wednesday underscores the role of obesity in type 2 diabetes. It suggests obesity is a major factor in up to half of new diabetes cases occurring annually in the US
The link between obesity and type 2 diabetes – a condition in which blood sugar becomes uncontrollable and remains too high – is well established. But the authors say their new study, published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, provides a more recent estimate of how often obesity contributes to diabetes, a study that relies on longer-term data than previous studies have used. The study was led by researchers at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
They looked at years of data from two sources. One was the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), an annual survey that asks a nationally representative group of Americans about their lifestyle and eating habits. The other was the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA), an ongoing study of more than 6,000 volunteers whose health has been monitored since 1999 to study heart disease. The combined data gave the researchers two different ways to study the health of Americans over a long period of time, especially from middle-aged to the elderly.
Between 2001 and 2004, according to NHANES data, about 34% of Americans between the ages of 45 and 79 met the criteria for obesity (a body mass index or BMI of 30 and above); in the years 2013 to 2016 this had changed to 41%. In the MESA data, 11.6% of the participants without pre-existing diabetes developed the condition over a median of nine years. And those who were obese in the MESA study were about three times as likely as non-obese people to develop diabetes during that time period (20% vs. 7.3%).
Based on both the MESA and NHANES data, the researchers estimate that obesity is now associated with 30% to 53% of the new diabetes cases seen annually. However, the impact of this relationship is not the same for all groups of people. Both obesity and type 2 diabetes are more common in people of color than Caucasians, and Black and Hispanic Americans are also more likely to die of diabetes. But the link between obesity and diabetes was actually strongest in white women, despite this group having the lowest obesity rates overall.
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“Our study highlights the meaningful impact that reducing obesity can have on the prevention of type 2 diabetes in the United States. Reducing obesity should be a priority, ”lead study author Natalie Cameron, a resident internal medicine physician at Northwestern University in Chicago, said in a statement. released by the American Heart Association, which co-funded this study with the federal government. “Public health efforts that support a healthy lifestyle, such as improving access to nutritious foods, promoting exercise, and developing community programs to prevent obesity, can significantly reduce new cases of type 2 diabetes.”
Other research has found it that the incidence of new diabetes cases in the US has declined between 2008 and 2018, even though the obesity rate has increased over the same time. But the number of new annual cases has not declined in people under 20, and diabetes is still the seventh leading cause of death in the US, contributing to 87,647 deaths in 2017. The authors are also concerned that the Covid-19 pandemic could alter the situation can worsen further, both directly and indirectly (some Research has even suggested that covid-19 infection may directly contribute to the development of diabetes).
“The greater severity of Covid-19 infection in obese individuals is worrying because of the increasing burden of adverse health effects they could experience in the coming years; therefore, further efforts are needed to help more adults adopt healthier lifestyles and hopefully reduce the prevalence of obesity, ”senior study author Sadiya Khan said in a statement.