Being underweight may put a woman with heart disease at increased risk, researchers have reported.
Two studies, reported to the conference of the European Society of Cardiology in Amsterdam yesterday, highlight the perils of being too thin.
A team led by Dr Aziza Azimi, of the Gentofte Hospital in Hellerup, Denmark, looked at the impact of body mass index and weight changes on survival in women with coronary artery disease. They took figures from 1,685 women with an average age of 64 years who had been diagnosed with coronary artery disease.
Over the following six years, those who were underweight had twice the risk of death compared with women of a healthy weight.
Dr Azimi said: "Weight maintenance or weight loss seems to increase the risk of death in underweight women with coronary artery disease. Our findings suggest that these women should gain weight in order to reduce their risk of death.
"These data appear to be against the common sense that obesity is a risk factor for cardiovascular mortality as underweight has been even more strongly related to worse clinical outcome than overweight."
A further study suggests that a low body mass index is also a risk factor for cardiovascular disease in patients with diabetes and high blood pressure.
Dr Takanori Nagahiro from Nagoya University Hospital in Nagoya City, Japan, and colleagues used figures from a drug trial involving 1,105 people with diabetes and high blood pressure. Over three years, 15% of those with a body mass index of below 23 developed cardiovascular disease, compared with 8% between 23 and 25.
Dr Nagahiro said: "As body mass index increased, cardiovascular disease risk decreased among Japanese hypertensive patients with glucose intolerance. The lowest BMI group showed the highest risk and the highest BMI group had the lowest risk."
The European Society of Cardiology Congress 2013 is held from 31 August to 4 September in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
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